Rick huffed. Raised his head. He screamed into the night.
I nearly peed in my pants.
* * *
I was sitting in my car, Aya in the driver’s seat, a baggie of ice from Ming’s kitchen against my throat. The window was down so the rest of the unit could talk to us, but the car was running and the seat was warming the misery out of me.
The tree was on the hood of my car, a bloated, misshapen, wrinkled, and weathered-looking trunk three feet tall, twisted branches with leaves so thick they rustled in the cold air. Vines coiled out of the pot to pool on the hood, wicked thorns on every branch and vine.
Lightning flashed overhead, odd lightning, pearly and prismed through the heavy fog. The water droplets glowed before the light vanished. It flickered again. Fog and lightning, especially lightning that flashed the colors of the rainbow, were a strange combination.
Even FireWind studied the sky. Then the flashing light was gone and the mist closed in again. His face high, his expressions went through a series of changes.
It occurred to me that the flashing lights could be an arcenciel. No one in Knoxville had seen a rainbow dragon in weeks. Maybe months. Including the assistant director of PsyLED, Soul. And people had been looking for her.
Frowning, my boss-boss pulled a cell phone from a pocket and thumbed through apps. He was waiting on several things, among them: the ETA of the forensic CSI team, and any information about white vans passing traffic cameras. So far there had been nothing about either. CSI was on the way but saw no point at speed, and the vans had seemingly vanished. He pocketed the phone. He raised his eyes to the tree on the car. “That thing is…ungodly ugly.”
I took a sip of water. Swallowing was painful, but it wasgetting better as my plant-body healed itself. FireWind had been afraid the tissues would swell and close off my air, but they were relaxing. “Yeah. I need a place to plant it,” I said. “And I need a new tree at HQ. How about in the roof garden.”
“You jest.” His tone was so dry my hair might have crackled.
I didn’t answer, but I did give him a side-eye smile. We had tried that once, and though the tree had been very happy to claim the space, the rest of the building hadn’t been so joyful when it outgrew its soil and its welcome. “I’ll plant this one on the edge of my property,” I said placidly.
Rick, fully clothed, rounded the vehicles and took a place in the backseat. “Ming’s people seized the nearly dead fanghead in the woods. I assume they took him to her clan home.”
I presumed Rick meant Ming’s punishment room, and that the vampire who tried to carry me off would be killed. I wondered if it was like the punishment house on the church grounds where I grew up. Or even worse. I wished I felt some small shard of sadness for his torture. But he had been trying to take me away.
“You didn’t attempt to ask for assertions regarding his health and safety?” Aya asked, again with that dry, wry tone.
It was a sticky situation. Legally Ming was Master of the City and her land might (or might not) be considered much like an embassy. Politics were still on miry ground in the United States regarding vampires and other paranormals, though the Dark Queen’s newly created ambassadors and her assigned legal teams were working to codify the vampires’—and by extension other paranormals’—right to exist.
“No,” Rick said. “They gave him some blood at the scene. He took a breath. And I left. I can’t testify to anything. And though I did get his scent, I never saw his face.”
I thought about that one. I had seen the vampire’s face up close and personal as I ripped the vine off his neck. I kept that to myself. Vamp relations were minefields. I looked over at the killing site, the battlefield where Yummy had beheaded the vampire she had challenged.
“Ingram. Why did the vampire try to take you away?” FireWind asked. “We don’t have anything you said after you were taken off scene.”
I touched my ear. “My comms set is gone. I hope I don’t haveto pay for that, since I lost it while being abducted and attacked.” FireWind didn’t reply. “The vampire said something about ‘smelling it’ on me. No explanation of whatitwas.”
“The Blood Tarot?” FireWind asked, not expecting an answer. “Did you smell it on her when you were in cat form?” he asked LaFleur.
Rick, his white hair moving slightly in the night air, bright in the fog and the faint lights, turned to us, his eyes unfocused and haunted. “Yes. Yummy smells like it too. Strange smell. Like old death and herbs and black magic.” Rick had been tattooed with a Blood Tarot.
That sounded horrible. I smelled nothing when I sniffed my hands but dug in my glove box until I found hand sanitizer. I cleaned my hands with the goop as best I was able, the residue smelling like synthesized mango. While I cleaned myself, I asked, “The dead body? What do we know?”
FireWind said, “White male, nude. Around five-ten, one fifty, muscular build with little body fat. Patchy facial hair, blondish, blue eyes. Signs of torture, but odd, not like the usual electric burns or cigarette burns, no broken fingers or pulled-out fingernails.”
I didn’t react. I had never seen the kinds of torture FireWind was describing, but I had seen lots of awful things, and the aftereffects of those things on the abused, at the church.
“Ming said he isn’t human,” Rick said, “and beneath the bleach, I smelled…” His words trailed off. “I smelled something familiar, but I can’t place it. Something odd.”
“For now, we’ll take her word,” FireWind said. He didn’t say, “That allows us to keep the body rather than turn it over to local law enforcement,” but I heard the words in his tone. “CSI has already taken the body to UTMC for a forensic PM.”
The University of Tennessee Medical Center was the only local hospital that had staff and forensic pathologists who worked on paranormal creatures.
The exterior landscape lights came on and Ming exited her home. “Ming,” I said, indicating the front door. The Master of the City was wearing a bloodred dress, a tight sheath that fell to her ankles. Her hair was up in a chignon, like women wore back in the sixties. She carried the two blades she had used in battle. Behind her walked Cai, dressed in his typical all black. Theylooked like vamps again. Dangerous. Killers. Not blood-drunk teenagers on spring break.
She walked from the concrete toward the battlefield, where Yummy still knelt on the ground beside the dead vampire. Ming’s delicate shoes were silent on the grass, her body shifting the fog into swirls, the currents of the air amplified by Cai’s passage behind her.
