The former MOC walked slowly to a shelf of dusty books. His scent and gait changed again and I realized that Leo was fighting internal bonds to keep going forward. Leo was in trouble and wasn’t able to tell me what kind or who to kill for him. He looked at one shelf of old leather-bound books, at me, and again back at the books. Without a word, he left the room, moving fast, and then with that vamp speed that displaced air, he disappeared, making a little pop of sound.
I studied the shelf. The books had the look of vamp journals, which were always musty, handwritten, and seldom in English, most written in French, Italian, Spanish, or any of dozens of languages. They shouldn’t be here. I was pretty sure they hadn’t been here the last time I looked for journals.
I was taller than either of my bodyguards, and I reached up high, pulling one book down at an angle, tugging on the rounded edge of the leather binding. When I opened it, I saw the fancy handwriting, like calligraphy, and not in English. I held it out to the vamp. Jermaine. “Can you read this?”
He frowned and carefully turned the pages. “No. I read only seven languages, and this looks like Gaelic. I read no Gaelic, though I know a few spoken Scottish Gaelic words.”
He reads only seven languages. Oy.
I pulled down all the old journals on that shelf, stacking them in the vamp’s arms. When he was laden, though not showing the weight, because vamps have that extra strength that comes from being dead-ish, I led the way back to the security room. On the way, I texted Alex with the words: “Our clues are: Adrianna, her magical belongings, an arcenciel and her blood, and some old books. And maybe something about my corona, since he touched the brass in the marble entry floor.”
Alex texted back: “Brass. Right. I’ll find vamps we trust to translate. Protocol Research means the bookswill not be allowed to leave the security room except with written permission of a member of your family (that’s you, me, Eli, and Bruiser) and no notes or pics are allowed. No one can take off with something they want.”
I glanced up at a camera as we passed and nodded.
CHAPTER 9
Only Cold Iron Would Hurt a Rainbow Dragon
Back in the security room, my guards settled against the wall behind my back, on either side of the coffeemaker. I had half noticed people standing there before, but there were people all over the room, so I hadn’t realized the two were there for me. I glanced back at them, giving them the kind of attention I should have given them before. Voodoo and the vamp were wearing black dress slacks, black dress shirts, and black jackets, with a gold crown embroidered on the left pec, not black jeans and long-sleeved T-shirts.Dang. The fancy duds meant they were as much an honor guard as bodyguards.
I hope they didn’t plan on accompanying me to the toilet. That would result in the same kind of head-banging injuries as the two vamps outside the door to Leo’s suite. My suite. Whatever.
I looked around the room, estimating maybe thirty people, all dressed in black, though most in black tees and jeans. All the shirts had the gold circle on them. Soooo. Black was my official color and the crown claimed them as mine, taking over from Leo’s dove gray. I figured he had noticed that. I wondered who had made that decision,and guessed Bruiser, who was not present yet, and was probably still dealing with the governor and law enforcement and the problems vamps made for New Orleans.
“Jane,” Alex said, pointing over my head.
I looked to the security screens and spotted Leo and Wrassler (dressed in black, which I hadn’t noticed) outside the MOC’s office, as the head of HQ’s security unlocked the door. “Cameras inside?” I asked.
“Negative,” Alex said as the two entered and vanished from the screens. “Wrassler informed me that Leo had appeared in his security station and requested—politely—that Wrassler accompany him for a few moments. I sent Angel Tit, one of the Vodka Boys, up fast to take over the station and Leo and Wrassler went straight to his old office.”
The scents in the room changed as tension wove through the people assembled there. I might be the only one who noticed the descriptive wordpolitelyAlex had used. Leo was never polite and he almost never asked; he ordered and he demanded—elegantly, yes—but asking was so rare I could count on one hand the times I remembered it happening.
I watched the clock on the bottom of the screen, and two minutes and change later, Leo left the room, Wrassler and Gee DiMercy behind him. Alex cursed half under his breath. I wasn’t the only one who hadn’t seen Gee enter. The Mercy Blade, aka the Misericord of the Mithrans, was a magical creature who could cloak himself in glamours, look like most anything he wanted, and could probably go anywhere, even with all the paranormal-detecting equipment in the hallways. He also often called me little goddess, which was always a little weird.
Wrassler closed and locked the door behind them. Leo was carrying a tiny silver box. They stopped and turned, seemed to be chatting, so I got a good look at the small but deadly swordfighter. Not for the first time, I realized Gee (in this form) and Leo could almost be related, the misericord and the vampire both olive-skinned, dark-haired, dark-eyed, and lean as slabs of beef, though Gee wasn’t a vamp and was more olive-skinned than the ivory-toned fanghead.
Gee wasn’t wearing black, a distinction that stood out sharply now that I knew what to look for. He was wearing a scarlet shirt and sapphire pants, a sword strapped around his hips. Once again, Gee carried the red-striped flying lizard on his shoulder, though the lizard was now bigger than only a few weeks past, its tail wrapped around Gee’s neck and across his shoulders and chest. The flying reptile was a good thirty-five pounds. Maybe more. The men stopped talking and started walking.
The security room was silent except for the soft clacking of keys from Alex’s desk area as he followed the pair on video through the hallways. Wrassler glanced up at each camera, knowing we were watching. The huge man’s face and body language were tight, though his limp was much less noticeable than once before. He’d lost a leg in a battle inside HQ. I hadn’t thought he’d survive, but he had, and then had married my friend Jodi, of NOPD. Wrassler was tense. Worried. Trying to tell us something by body language alone, but I didn’t know what.
The scents of agitated people in the security room with me went up another notch.
“Ready a team?” Alex asked me. Meaning a security team of armed and dangerous former active military to head that way. Half a dozen men and women in the security room instantly pulled and checked weapons.Ready a teamto... do what? Race around and try to shoot Leo? Maybe accidently injuring Wrassler? Try to shoot Gee? Bullets wouldn’t hurt Gee. And why would we do that anyway? Nothing was happening, nothing except Wrassler’s unease.
And then it hit me. Dawn. The vamps would be no help. Even as I had the thought, the fangheads filed out of the room and popped away, leaving only humans in security.
“No,” I said, settling back in my chair. “Wait.” Instantly the tension in the room went down a notch.Oh. Right.I had to remember that as the DQ, my emotions affected the emotions of my people. A calm queen meant calm teams.Weird.
The three men walked to the front entrance, through the airlock, and started down the stairs to the oval parking area that diplomats and important guests used.Multiple screens showed the scene from different angles. Dark out. The night just beginning to lighten as dawn threatened the vamp-world.
On one screen, two arcenciels appeared overhead. Opal was iridescent in blues, silvers, with faint trails of pinks, cool and bright all at once. Pearl shone with the hues of nacre, pearly white, pearl pink, black pearls. I hadn’t seen them since they tried to steal my crown and hadn’t seen them here since we fought Shaun MacLaughlinn. The fact that they appeared twice in one night was odd, suspicious, maybe dangerous.
Leo extended his fist, holding it high in the air. A reflection glinted between his fingers, from the security lights and the faint dark gray of dawn. Which Leo should not be able to withstand without being a lot more powerful than he let on.
He opened his hand to reveal the silver box, cradled in his palm, and the two arcenciels dove closer. They hovered in the air above him, wings flashing in all the colors of the rainbow, capturing the dawn light. I watched as Leo waited. Opal altered shape, growing a human-shaped limb that hadn’t been there a moment before. Fingers, thumb, palm, at the end of one full arm.Crap. We had never caught vid of arcenciels partially shapeshifting before, and here we had one growing an extra limb. Opal took the box from his hand and darted back a few yards, as if fearful he might demand it back.
Gee then stepped down three steps and lifted the flying lizard into the air, over his head. The arcenciels flew closer again, their translucent wings batting at the men’s hair, sending it flying. They sniffed the lizard’s belly the way dogs might scent another. The red flying lizard flapped its wings and puffed out its throat in some kind of display, the throat an unexpected sapphire blue.
