“Now you’re talking.”
***
Later, I was loose and supple and feeling pretty spiffy. I was also happy the walls of the queen’s quarters were soundproofed. Things had gotten loud. Then there was shower play, a massive dinner, a catnap, and then things got loud again. All in all, it was aveeerrrynice afternoon.
While I played, all my people worked: the Everharts on wards, my security teams on keeping us safe, city cops and ATF on explosive-filled trucks parked in the middle of town, the Roberes on legal and political stuff that I hated, and Alex and Santiago on the maps.
When I emerged from my room, it was to discover several problems had been dealt with, but as usual, there were new problems. PsyLED had finally shown up in New Orleans, liaising with ATF and Jodi Richoux, the head of the woo-woo department at cop central—not with the master of the city or the Dark Queen, which was an insult, if I chose to take it that way.
The guy who had shown up, and then displayed hideously bad manners, was a new special agent, at least to NOLA, named Roberto D. Jimenez. Besides being new to NOLA, and rude, Roberto was out of the Dallas office, not out of the southeast headquarters located in Knoxville. I found all of that peculiar and I wasn’t alone. Alex was investigating why no one in PsyLED SE, who were also my allies in national law enforcement, had shown up here. He was also monitoring Jimenez’s actions and whereabouts onlaw enforcement radio channels in case he was in league with Mainet.
In the good news department, Alex had found us a likely church to visit. The Blessed Virgin church in Algiers.
***
It was dark when we drove across the Mississippi.
I had been able to stay in human form for longer than expected and had shifted to half-form late in the day. To preserve muscle mass, I had eaten yet another massive dinner, and afterward dressed in fresh armor. I carried only a few weapons, though holy water was part of it this time, secured on a weapons harness, in plasticized glass to keep it from breaking and drenching me by accident. My hair was braided, tied off with an elastic, and tucked into the neckline of my armor and down my back.
We had a three-vehicle security detail, with Eli, Bruiser, Quint, and me in the middle one. Since we’d be going into a church, and vamps couldn’t go into churches, and Alex, Bruiser, Eli, and I hadn’t told anyone what church, Bruiser and Eli felt we were safer with a small motorcade than with an attention-getting large one. The relative safety, however, didn’t mean anyone was taking chances. My crew was appropriately decked out for any unexpected war.
My honeybunch and I slouched in the back seat together on the drive, looking over floor plans and online pics of the damage sustained by the church. Armor was not comfortable slouching wear, but I got a good idea of the layout of the building, pre–hurricane damage. Getting into the Blessed Virgin church at night would be difficult. No electricity, no lights, structural and cosmetic damage, and everything probably still boarded up.
The church was on the west side of the river, on a corner near Algiers Point, farther south than we had searched before. It was once a beautiful old church but had been heavily damaged in several recent hurricanes. It was also only a hundred years or so old, younger than any of our maps. Since Mainet worked with witches, maybe the witches who marked the original spot had died off. Maybe something important had begun here, but the landscape had changed so much the vamps couldn’t find the X-spot anymore. Maybe an original church had been destroyed.Yeah. Could be. Or the site could have been a native holy site. Christian churches were often built on the sites of older, non-Christian holy places. All of those were likely possibilities.
Which meant Mainet and his pals could be hoping to use us to find his X-marked spot. Interesting possibility. And no way around them seeing us if they were already looking for us to find this place.
Our minds already synced, Eli said, “We should have split up and taken different routes.”
“No,” Koun said, over comms. “I stand by my original statement. We protect the queen.”
Eli grunted. It was a sound that said he hadn’t agreed originally, and didn’t entirely agree now, but he could see the logic in Koun’s preference.
The protection detail vehicles parked before us and behind us on a street with most of the streetlights out, the others with dull yellowish glows. It was a halfway decent neighborhood of homes and small business, many damaged by multiple storm surges and in various stages of repair.
I carried Angie’s little gold Jesus in a right jacket pocket, and the Glob, wrapped in hankies, in the left, a specially designed and padded pocket. My crown hadn’t been invited along but, as we parked, it showed up on the console. I figured that meant I might need it.Crap.
Eli ordered us to “Sit,” as he and his units checked out the grounds before we were allowed out of the car. In this form, I had Beast’s night vision, turning everything greens and silvers and almost nothing too shadowed to see.
The church was tall, constructed of reddish brick with lots of white woodwork, a huge wooden door in one of those pointed-arched openings, a clock and bell tower four stories tall, and stained glass windows, some beneath security glass and some with plywood protection over them. There were statues placed up high on the outside walls, maybe white marble, hard to tell much about them in the dark.
Eli jogged halfway to us in the night, silver-green in Beast’s vision, wearing full night-combat gear. Overcomms, he alerted us it was safe, and we opened our doors. I adjusted my earbuds to my oddly placed cat ears.
As we emerged into the chilly night, Leo appeared, walking out of the shadows.
As if he saw Leo the moment I did, Eli whipped around at his approach, a weapon that hadn’t been in his hand only a moment before aimed at the vamp. It was reholstered instantly, the movements, the motions all slick and faster than I could focus. Quint mirrored Eli’s actions, fast, but more on the human side of fast, while Eli was still hyped up on healing vamp blood. We were attuned to each other’s reactions, and his own heart rate hadn’t gone up, our bond steady and smooth as an ice-covered pond.
Leo stopped a few feet away. He was wearing black with the priest’s collar, and once again a gold cross hung around his neck, the clothing between the holy icon and his undead flesh, but still close enough to cause a lot of pain and maybe even burns. “Eli Younger. My George.” Leo looked at me, his voice a mesmerizing embrace, and, disregarding the others, said, “My Jane.”
I frowned at him and ignored all the possessives. “How did you know we’d be here? We didn’t know we’d be here until like an hour ago, and we didn’t even tell our escort.”
Leo smiled, the moonlight shining on his pale face like a lover’s caress, chiseling his cheekbones, glinting from his dark eyes. “I have my ways.” An elegant gesture to his side revealed the presence of a white werewolf trotting up the street, with a dark splotch on its back.
Brute and the Grindylow. Brute was working with the angel. And with Leo. I considered the werewolf, wondering how much humanity he still maintained after all the time in wolf form. How much autonomy did he have, working for the angel? How much did the werewolf contribute to the ongoing problems and solutions in the vamp world? The timewalking werewolf. Working with Leo. Brute was a player in the vamp political, multiple-dimensional chess game, and I had no way to plan for his potential moves on Leo’s board.
“Brute,” I said.
The werewolf snorted a greeting.
