Leo stared inside, meeting first Eli’s eyes, and then mine, despite the heavily darkened windows. He nodded, his head moving deliberately up and down, making certain that we knew he was agreeing with Eli. Leo pointed to his clerical collar.
I reached for the window button and slid the armored glass down, open to the chilly night air. Leo’s vamp scent blew in, that odd scent he had developed, different top notes overlaying his natural vamp-scent undertones. Leo had changed scent when he changed. So yeah. Immanuel’s scent change had been accepted. “Was Immanuel intended to become an outclan priest, like you?”
Leo stared hard at me and nodded again, but this time it was a jerky movement, as if it hurt him. His pupils went wide and black, the sclera bleeding scarlet, vamping out as he fought an internal battle. His hand gripped the pillar between the front window and mine. His claws extended and, despite the armor of the vehicle, pierced the metal. Something, that compulsion I had seen before, was stopping him from speaking, was causing him intense distress. He was losing control.
I had to ask this fast. I didn’t have long before he broke or tried to kill something. Probably me. “You wanted Immanuel for something special, but he was a playboy vamp. Then something happened and he changed and told you he planned to become a Mithran outclan priest, didn’t he?”
Leo nodded again, his black eyes widening as if encouraging me.
“But you never chose an heir, which is just weird in the vamp world,” I said, watching his face. “And by not choosing, he became your default heir, the child of your body, the vamp closest to you, important but not protected. By not making him your heir, and not putting him to work, covered by a security detail, you set him free to see the world and roam, and to hopefully grow into the person you wanted him to become. That’s where you screwed up and your enemies found him and got their hooks in him. Right?”
Leo lifted a shoulder as if saying I had a lot of it right and pointed to my pocket holding the hanky-wrapped key. Surprised, I pulled it out and placed it into his hand. Leo sniffed it and jerked back. He dropped the key into the grass. He disappeared, that faint vamp-popping sound of air displacement.
Eli slipped from the vehicle and searched for the key in the grass. Brute leaped over Eli’s bent form and into the back seat, between Bruiser and me. Eli, who reacted faster than I could follow, aimed his shotgun away from the wolf and shook his head. He dropped the key into my palm. “Gonna get yourself shot, dog,” he said.
“What just happened?” I asked. “Other than a stinky dog getting into the car.” The werewolf stank as if he’d been rolling in something dead. “Holy moly. Opossum? Armadillo? Oh Crap.Skunk?Please say that isn’t skunk.” I would have shoved him farther away but I didn’t want to touch him. “Is this the witches’ skunk spell? Oh holy crap, I’m gonna die here.”
Brute chuffed in amusement and rolled over against my leg.
Eli shut the driver’s door, buckled in, and gave sotto voce orders and hand signals to the others. “Beats me,”he said to us. “But let’s get out of here. We’ve been too long in the open.”
Brute chuffed again and made as if to crawl in my lap.
“I will shoot you dead,” I threatened.
He panted at me. He had also tasted whatever he’d found.
Beast thought,Good stinky smell. Would eat with Brute.
Holy cow. No. Gack.
Quint got in the passenger seat and took up Eli’s shotgun. We pulled away from the curb, as did our escort team. One block later, Bruiser lowered the windows, despite the security risk, and we headed toward the river and New Orleans with the night air doing its best to clear the stench from the SUV.
When we got to our freebie house, I said to the wolf, “You can take a bath in the backyard or go away.”
The white wolf showed me teeth in what was clearly an insult, like being shot the finger, werewolf-style, but when I opened the SUV door, he trotted to the side gate and waited to be let in. Quint followed him into the dark and opened it.
Over her shoulder, she said, “I got him a kids’ plastic pool for baths. I’ll take care of it.”
***
After we all changed out of battle gear, and Quint bathed the stinky wolf, we regathered in the kitchen and ate delivery pizza from Pizza Delicious. The vamps we had left guarding the Queen’s Personal Residence in New Orleans, Koun and Tex, joined us, leaning against the wall, the far-less-stinky werewolf rolling on a beach blanket Quint had placed on the floor to dry himself off. He was still a little skunky but not as bad as before.
When we finished stuffing our faces, Quint poured coffee for the guys and tea for me, and Tex started on our few dishes. Not bad. Quint was a sociopath at best, a self-controlled psychopath at worst. Or maybe she just hid the bodies really well. But if she bathed the werewolf and kept me in tea, I really didn’t care if she was a scary killer. And Tex was adorable in an apron and sudsy hands. Tex, who could have been NOLA’s MOC, was washing dishesin my kitchen while one of his dogs joined Brute in his energetic rolling.
Eli said, “We got clarification on some things. Immanuel was eaten earlier than we first thought. Leo found us there, so he knows this church is important even if he isn’t totally sure why. And we have the silver key and the crucifix but no idea how to use them or what they’re for.”
Bruiser said, “May I see the crucifix?”
“It’s just a piece of Jesus jewelry. Not a— Holy crap.” I unfolded the dead Jesus and held the back up to the light. There were three little knobs on back. “Leo recently, and tonight, was wearing a gold cross with three little holes in it.”
“A vamp wearing a cross?” Alex asked, skeptical.
“Yeah, that was my impression too. It wasn’t touching his skin, but he should still have been screaming in agony at the least or going up in flames at the worst. Anyway, there were holes in it. I don’t remember how many, but the cross was about this size”—I held up the Jesus—“and Angie showed me where the Jesus jewelry was, in the office next to Leo’s old office in HQ.”
“Part of the same jewelry?” Bruiser asked, holding out his hand. He turned Jesus over and over.
“Brute.” I snapped my fingers at the wet wolf. He snarled at me from his place on the floor, a fangy expression I ignored. “Is Hayyel trapped in the church?”
