“Given their violent history, it’s odd how so many Mithrans have turned down positions of power just to stay with you.” He gave me an odd, gentle smile. “I understand such loyalty and devotion to you, from personal experience. But for so many Mithrans to cling to anyone not their maker is unusual. And delightful.”
I might have blushed. Just a tiny bit. I leaned my head to his shoulder, and he kissed the top of my head.
“Gag me with a spoon. If y’all are gonna suck face, I’m outta here.” Alex gathered up his electronic paraphernalia and left the room.
Bruiser lifted my hand and kissed my knuckles, mischief gleaming in his eyes. “That boy has no romance at all in his soul.”
“True dat,” I said, in NOLA style. “That said, wanna make out?”
“Always, my love. Always.”
But as usual, there wasn’t time.
***
It was near ten p.m. when a select group, which included two of the Everharts, gathered in the security room to watch live vest cam footage from Eli’s small security team. Liz Everhart sat on one side of me, her twin on the other. I wasn’t stupid. I understood that the sisters were boxing me in. It was a polite and indirect threat to my life and health, should Eli not come back alive, healthy, and in one piece. Molly narrowed her eyes at her sisters, making sure they saw her thoughts on the subject matter. That was one cool thing about BFFs and sisters. A single look could say so much.
Quint, who had a finely honed instinct for trouble, sat to our right, her back to comms and security control. Her position gave her a clean line of fire toward the armory area, the doorway, and the twins. Only Alex was out of her line of fire, and I was pretty sure Quint didn’t know Alex had a weapon, nor how good a shot he was. Yet.
The new chick, Sarah Spieth, sat at Alex’s side, her arm in a cast and sling and her leg stretched out on a chair. She was still deaf from the concussion, but thanks to the quantity of vamp blood in her, she was mostly out of pain and on the way to healing, maybe a little stoned on vamp blood. Alex had promoted her to her new position—“Wrassler Jr.,” as he dubbed her, would take over in Wrassler’s previous position.
When Wrassler married Jodi, he’d been promoted to an admin position, with a big leap in salary and benefits.We had been looking for a replacement. Sarah fit the bill. Besides being former active duty military, she had good mechanical aptitude, and no problem learning various electronic and computer platforms.
As her military sleeve put it, “Takes no shit; adaptable; responsible to chain of command; speaks three languages and ASL.” (Which I figured out meant American Sign Language.) “Self-motivated.” Under an aside comment were the words, “Might be psychic.” I liked the “Might be psychic” part. Alex wanted her as Active Comms Chief and Head of HQ Grounds Security. That freed up Wrassler to do the admin job of HQ Internal Security, Official Liaison between NOLA and the Dark Queen, and the job of making sure the blood-servants were safe, like an over-qualified Human Resources person.
Sarah turned her head, not moving her leg. For someone who had been blown up and jumped off a roof only hours ago, she looked pretty dang good: military high-and-tight haircut, piercings, tats, and a great attitude. She looked at Quint and narrowed her eyes. Yeah. Sarah knew her military stuff and she knew people. We were gonna get along great.
Her eyes shifted from Quint, to me, to the overhead map.She typed a note to Alex and he typed one back.
I turned my attention to the sit map—the situation map that showed each unit member and where they were, as well as all private company security cameras and all the doorbell cameras Alex had been able to obtain. Each of the team members were indicated by a different color, with a name in place below each dot.
Eli’s team had parked two blocks over and we watched and listened as they moved toward the Marigny address on foot. Over comms, small dogs were barking, loud music played in the distance, and people were singing drunkenly somewhere close by as the four-member unit leaped over fences and threaded silently through alleys and back gardens. They stayed close, no more than twenty feet between them at any time. Their cams picked up firepits and tiki lights and people dancing. No one saw the team, and if a silent alarm went off, no cops or security guys showed up.
Eli and pals finally reached the address, a narrow-fenced lot on Burgundy Street near Ursulines Avenue. Inside the fence was a beat-up delivery truck, the back doors partially open as if it was empty. Or an invitation to be ambushed.
The vamps on the team kept silent watch as Eli knelt and deployed a tiny remote-controlled speedster toy with an even tinier camera mounted on top. He maneuvered the toy closer to the truck and raised the camera on a four-foot-long telescoping handle. Inside the truck was something that looked like big lumps, not attackers. But something about them must have given Eli pause.
“What is it?” Liz murmured.
I shook my head, feeling Eli’s interest morphing into a shared worry.
Whatever it was, Eli didn’t like it. He retracted the camera and backed the toy away. He said, “I see bags of something, and I’m getting a familiar tickle in the back of my throat when the wind blows this way, something like fertilizer. Exfil to the next block,” he said to his team. “Move it.”
We figured it out at the same time and Liz’s fingers grabbed my arm, tightening, not looking at me. “Please be safe,” she whispered. It sounded like a prayer. Waiting for the explosion. The death of her boyfriend.
CHAPTER 14
A Little Bit of Dog Snot
Pops of air sounded over comms. The pad of running footsteps filtered to us. “If the truck’s loaded with ammonium nitrate,” Eli said, “we’ll lose the entire block.”
Alex said, “Placing another call to NOLA PD bomb squad, the ATF team leader who was on scene at the airport rocket attack and the explosions at HQ. He’s not getting much downtime.”
Holy crap,I thought. Ammonium nitrate was the stuff used in the Oklahoma City bombing, and in Beirut, Lebanon. It was the landscapers’ bomb material of choice. Large-scale purchases were heavily traced by the government, but... New Orleans was a port with plenty of hidden places for smuggling via boat. If you knew how to avoid the authorities and were familiar with the waterways, you could get anything in.
“We’ll stick around until the area is evacuated,” Eli said, his breathing just a hint more labored than normal, though that might have been the effect of running full out after a devastating injury, not worry. “Just in case NOPD wants or needs our help.”
“Also placing calls to the Roberes,” Alex said. “Good thing Onorios don’t need much sleep. They haven’t gotten any in the last few days.”
