Voodoo looked older and harder, a little thicker through the chest, and he walked with a firm stride, his eyes landing on the vamp at his side as often as they did on the surroundings. Since Derek died at the hands of enemy vamps, our humans were having a little trouble trusting vamps they didn’t know well, and this guy was fairly new. Or maybe it wasn’t Derek-related, and Voodoo just didn’t like vamps in general. Integrating vamps and humans in security teams had worked well for us, but that didn’t mean they always got along. There had been a few bitings. And a few shootings. So far no one had died.
When we got to the elevator, Leo was holding the door for us, his face impassive, the lack of expression one he had worn when he rode his power over most of the vamps in the nation, making NOLA the stronghold of vamp power in the Americas. We got on and Leo pushed a button, not speaking. Voodoo seemed uncomfortable with the silence, his partner, Leo, and probably puma-faced me, his eyes moving between the two vamps.
When the doors opened, we were looking at subbasement four. This level hadn’t been used a lot when I first came to NOLA, as most vamps stayed at their Clan Homes with their Blood Master and human dinners. Then there had been some violent clan rearrangements and the eight vamp clans had become four, leaving four Clan Homes empty and overcrowding the remaining four. Near the same time, Leo’s Clan Home had burned to the ground. Leo, as MOC, had opened the Mithran Council Chambers to house many clanless vamps as well as the overflow from the suddenly much larger clans. Around that time, parts of sub-four began to get a makeover. Leo walked along the hallway, opened one of the storage rooms, and peeked inside.
“You organized it,” he said mildly. “My people always wanted me to assign the chore to someone, but there was sensitive information in the records, and magical trinkets were stored here, locked in trunks, hidden in the safe. Some out on the shelves for the taking.”
“Derek’s guys organized it,” I said, my heart in a spasm at the name. “Your enemies killed Derek.”
“My enemies will kill us all if they can,” Leo said. “And you have far more enemies than I ever did.”
Point to Leo.
He didn’t ask what had happened to the info or the amulets and I didn’t volunteer. He moved on, stopping at one of the newly refurbished suites. He placed his palm on the door, as if giving it a blessing, but he didn’t try the knob. “You finally killed her, despite my best efforts to keep her alive.”
I knew this room. It had been dusty and abandoned when I first came here. Now it was a suite for a vamp or two and several humans. Before that, the room had been used by Adrianna, and I had killed her several times before Leo stopped saving her. Eventually I took her head and she stayed dead.
“There is nothing here now,” he said, which made no sense. Leo turned and glided back to the elevator, his motions as smooth as they had been before the weird jerky movements and the inability to talk in the security room. There was something almost feline about his movements now, predatory and hungry, like a hunting big-cat. This was the Leo I knew best.
Back at the elevator, we stepped on, the unit rose, and we stepped out, me following Leo’s lead to the gymnasium. The lights were off, which was a surprise. I wasn’t sure I had ever seen the gym with the lights off, but it was near dawn and the vamps would be heading to bed soon; the humans would be changing out shifts. It smelled of the new synthetic workout mats and unknown vamps: the floral of wilted funeral flowers, a little nutmeg, a hint of lemon, the scent of raw earth, like a newly turned field. Blood from their dinners.
Leo entered and the lights came on, motion sensor orAlex following us on the security cameras. “You changed little,” Leo said.
“New mats. And we added landing mats so our people can learn more advanced moves without getting hurt.”
A faint smile tugged at his eyes. “You treat my people as if they will easily break.”
“Yep.”
Leo shook his head. “A little blood, a few bruises never hurt anyone.”
I didn’t respond to that.
Pensively, he said, “I remember when the Dragon appeared here for the first time. You fought it.”
That was an odd memory. An odd tone. I shifted my eyes from the far wall to Leo, and something clicked in my brain. We weren’t just taking “an old home tour,” letting him revisit his former HQ. Leo was using this excursion to tell me something. Maybe several somethings. Adrianna, a nutso and a traitor, who had been saved by Leo on several occasions. Her possessions, which had included a magically empty snake amulet armband, had been kept in the storage room along with lots of other amulets. An angry arcenciel named Opal had invaded the vamp gym and been badly injured. Arcenciel blood... Timewalking? Was he trying to tell me something about timewalking?
Leo sighed, another totally unnecessary breath, turned, and left the gym. This time I followed a half step behind instead of walking next to him, watching him the same way the guards did. We took the elevator to the main floor and walked toward the front entry. Just beyond the hallway, he stopped.
He was looking over the place, taking in the changes made when he died and I became the Dark Queen and the MOC of his city. The walls were still the soft dove gray of the Pellissier clan. Also unchanged from his tenure were the carpet, rugs, security nook, and the high-tech, bullet-resistant entry. But not everything was the same.
His eyes were drawn to the white-and-gray marble tile on the floor of the magnificent foyer. His crest had beeninlaid there once. Now mine was there. Something in Leo’s stance changed, tensed, and his head tilted to the side in that improbably birdlike way vamps have. His scent changed too, growing sharper, more acerbic.
Blue Voodoo reached for his weapon. The vamp beside him placed a pale white hand on his arm, preventing the human from drawing. I held up a hand to stop him too, and mouthed,Wait.
Leo walked into the foyer and stopped at the edge of the circle of my crown, staring down at it.
From the security nook, Wrassler appeared, one hand out of sight. Wrassler had been Leo’s man, but none of us really knew who Leo was now.
The former MOC dropped to one knee and held a hand, palm down, half a foot above the gold-toned circle, as if testing the temperature or feeling for magic. He lowered his left index finger and gently touched the brass that had been inlaid in the middle of the white-and-gray marble, the circle six feet in diameter, representing my crown, centered with the Glob, a puma fang, and a feather in different-colored marble. My crest.
“I didn’t make the changes,” I said, feeling slightly uncomfortable when he held that position, unmoving as stone, not breathing, staring at the Dark Queen’s crest in the middle of the wide space that had once been his. “I didn’t even know the work had been done until Bruiser told me about it.”
Leo looked up from the marble inlaid crest. “My George,” he said softly. “Yes. It is customary for the master of the city, the most powerful Mithran in the territory, to have his crest inlaid in the entry floor of his city’s Council Chambers headquarters, to remind friends and visiting enemies alike who they would have to fight and conquer. I am not displeased.” He stood and looked to Wrassler. “I am gratified you survived your injuries, my friend.”
Wrassler blinked in surprise. I was dead certain that Leo had never called Wrasslerfriendin his previous life. “Thank you, sir,” Wrassler said.
Leo turned and took the stairs this time, meanderingto a different floor. We trailed behind. When Leo opened the door to the vamp library, the lights again came on.Oh yeah.Alex was following our progress through the building.
