The thing on the pillow was a semiautomatic handgun. From the deep dents, it had been on the pillow awhile. And Eli... Eli was in the hospital. So he had put it here some time ago for me to find. Like a present. Tears filled my eyes.
I eased the weapon out of the holster, and placed it on the bed, whispering, “Ohhh. My.” If a gun could ever be calledsexy, this was the gun. It was an HK45 Tactical. The weapon had a large trigger guard and a long grip. It was only a .45, but it would be sufficient for most of my needs. I tilted the weapon and saw that the barrel was threaded for suppressors and had rails for accessories. Lights or lasers. Cool stuff. Eli-approved stuff. Hecklerand Koch had a solid name in both military and law enforcement. Plus it was a freaking cool gun. “Hey there, baby. Get a look at you.”
Wrapping my hand around the oversized grip, I seated it carefully in my half-form hand, trigger finger on the frame, and released the magazine. The grip fit my knobby fingers and odd-shaped palm, and was heavily crosshatched to make it stay in place when it got sweaty or bloody. The grip was ergonomic, comfy, and easy to hold, and the grip could be changed out for a smaller one for my human-sized hand. I had other weapons with convertible grips but this one was... not pretty. It looked... effective. Yeah. That.
With my left hand, I pulled back the slide. There was no round in the chamber, not that I’d let that make me any less cautious. People had died for less. I sighted the weapon on the closet doorknob and wished I had requested a gun range be built into one of the unused subbasements. I could still do that. I was the queen. I could have a shooting range if I wanted to. I grinned like a madwoman.
I checked the ammo in the mag. These were silver-lead Radically Invasive Projectiles 2.0, called RIP2 bullets, designed for paras. I hated them. The frangible rounds were designed to fracture into very small pieces after impact, once they were inside flesh, and were like hollow-points on steroids. A single round could utterly destroy a human body cavity. These rounds were a grade above standard human lethal, and the added silver made them lethal to vamps, were-creatures, and any other creature with a silver allergy.
Still. One round into Mainet’s belly and he’d be down, laid out for a beheading. My worries about what he might be up to would be gone.Temptation, thy name is gunfire.
The magazine snapped into place slick as goose grease and the holster accepted it like a lover. I strapped the thigh-rig on my right side. The straps would crush the velour. Madame Melisende would be ticked. Or maybe not. She might just make me another soft set of sweats that wouldn’t crush. That would be nice.
Feeling more like me, I opened the door. Saw three forms. Without thought, I grabbed one by the throat and slammed him into the second one. They both fell. Ireached for the third, who stepped back fast, hands up, and disappeared down the hallway.
They were all wearing black with a gold embroidered crown logo on the left side of the chest, over the heart.My people.The third one had turned and vanished so fast I might have imagined him. Her. Whoever.
Neither of the two at my feet was breathing. Had I just killed two of my guards? Panic threaded through me. “Holy crap in a bucket,” I muttered, and knelt beside them. I took a breath and smelled vamp and my own scent, but also the stink of human, human blood, and sex. Hands shaking, I gripped the jaw of the one on my left and forced open his mouth. Inch-and-a-quarter-long fangs rested against the top of his mouth. The one on my right had fangs a little longer.Vamps. Out cold. Not dead humans.
I closed my eyes as relief sang through me like electricity through high-wires.
I hadn’t killed anyone.
I gusted out a breath, thinking. I hurt all over from the too-fast, sloppy, defensive moves. The one who had run? I pictured his face. Long-Knife? The not-quite-a-vamp sent to me by Ming of Knoxville. He had turned tail and run, not that I blamed him. Probably scared I’d whack him too. But what had he been doing outside my quarters?
“Hey, Aunt Jane.”
Aunt Jane.Adult voice. No immediate attack.
I opened my eyes and looked up from my crouch to see Shiloh Everhart Stone. She was standing with her hands laced together below her waist, shoulders relaxed. No weapons on her. No weapons visible on her. Standing a good twelve feet away. Addressing me as Aunt Jane, not My Queen. That alone made this a social, personal meeting.
Since when did I have to analyze every single freaking thing everyone said to me? Every nuance of expression or tone or body position? Since when had I become so paranoid?
I stood slowly. I towered over Shiloh, but she didn’t alter position or scent. She wasn’t scared of me. She didn’t smell of prey or predator, no more than any witch or vamp did.
The young, witch-bred-vampire had learned to applymakeup well enough to add years and sophistication to the fifteen years or so she had been when she was forcibly turned by Renee Damours. She was dressed in elegant black pants and a jacket, her blouse the same dark red as her long, straight hair. She carried a haze of witch magics about her, visible in my altered not-quite-human eyesight.
Shiloh had been studying with the outclan priestess, Sabina, before the very ancient vamp had been consumed by anu’tlun’ta. Now, oddly, Shiloh’s magics were leashed in a way similar to the magics of Ailis/Bliss, the other young witch I had seen tonight. I wondered if they were studying magics together. If they were in a coven together. Were lovers or something.Aunt Jane.
Shiloh was my scion. She had sworn to me. She was also the child of Evangelina Everhart, my BFF’s sister, the witch I had killed for summoning a demon. Shiloh was tied into my entire history in both New Orleans and Asheville. And in a small way, to the angel Hayyel, who had helped banish the demon. And, therefore, to the mess I was in.
I let a small smile cross my cat face. “Hey, Shiloh.” I toed the vamp on the left. “You saw that, I guess.”
She chuckled, the sound far too mature for her teenaged looks. “Nice move. I’m sure Alex caught it on the security cam. Those two will take a lot of bloody ribbing for letting their own queen knock them out.” She crossed her waist with one arm and propped the other elbow on the hand, the fingers of her raised hand on her chin. She lifted an eyebrow, amusement in her eyes. “Alex says he’s sending the vid to Eli in hospital, so his brother can enjoy seeing the results of his sparring with you the moment he comes out of surgery.”
I glanced at her ears and saw the earbuds both exactly the same color as her perfect, vamp-white, Irish-gene-gifted flesh. “Update on Eli?”
“The surgeon isn’t happy to have a vampire in the surgical suite,” Shiloh reported, still amused. “But Kojo convinced him it was okay.”
Convinced him, in vamp-speak, meant rolled him and forced him to agree. Kojo had rolled a surgeon and wasin a surgical suite. I might have to pay off the surgeon once he came out of the mesmerism.
I said, “Alex, I know you can hear me over Shiloh’s mic. You make sure Kojo knows that I’m properly grateful for his blood to heal my brother, but that if the surgeon makes a mistake because of being rolled, I’ll hang his head on a pike at the entrance to HQ.”
A moment later, Shiloh chuckled. “Alex already threatened Kojo, except he told the vampire you’d hang his skin on the front door.”
“Whatever works,” I said.
At my feet, the vamp on the left took a breath and groaned. I toed him again. His eyes fluttered and he looked pained.
