She walked straight to Yummy. Ming extended the swords to Cai, who took them. The MOC bent over and pulled a bloody necklace from the stump of the vampire’s neck and hung it around Yummy’s neck. Yummy made a sound suspiciously like a sob.
Bare-handed, Ming rested her hands on Yummy’s head and spoke, so softly I couldn’t hear her words. When she was done, she held out her hand to Cai, who placed the smallsword in her hand. I reached for the door handle to halt whatever was about to happen.
Aya stopped me with a lifted hand. “Wait.”
Ming used the blade to cut her wrist and held it to Yummy. The young vampire drank from Ming. “Oh,” I said. “She’s healing her.”
“Yes. And more,” Aya said. “I think much more.”
Yummy pulled a small blade and slit her own wrist, holding it up for Ming to sip from. The Master of the City took a small sip and licked the wound closed.
Cai held out something to Yummy. It was a floral duffel bag that matched the satchel she had dropped on the driveway before the fight. Yummy stood, rising slowly, as if she hurt, and bowed from her waist to Ming. Her clothing was crusted with blood, most of it her own. Ming turned and, with Cai behind her, walked back to her clan home and inside. The door closed.
“What’s happening?” I asked.
Aya sighed. “Nothing good, I fear.”
Yummy cleaned her blades on the clothing of the dead vamp nearest, picked up the duffel bag, and limped toward us. On the way, she sheathed the long weapon from the scabbard she had tossed to the ground. She stored the short one in the satchel and approached my car.
Yummy opened the back door on the driver’s side and stuffed her belongings on the floor behind Aya before sheclimbed in and shut the door. None of us said anything. Yummy looked worn, tired, and sad in the faint light coming from the landscape lights outside. Her blond hair was bloody and she was missing a hank at one shoulder where a sword had cut it off at some point during the battle. Her eyes were unfocused, staring into the distance at the back of the driver’s seat.
Finally she took a breath and breathed it out, leaned in toward me, focused on my eyes, and said, “Hi, roomie.”
“What?”
She laughed, but didn’t sound amused. Maybe a little manic. “I personally challenged Ming’s attackers instead of allowing them to challenge Ming properly. And I reeked of the Blood Tarot. The ones who got away will believe that I possess the cursed deck. Therefore, I’ve been…” She shrugged slightly, and when she spoke she sounded all formal and vampirish. “Removed from service.”
Her expression was empty and strange and I glanced from her to FireWind, who was watching her. He looked pensive, and a little sad, as if he knew what she meant.
“At the same time, I’ve also been charged with keeping you alive,” she said, on a sigh, as if she hated what she was saying next. “So, with your permission, I’m moving in to keep you safe from Torquemada’s assassins and guards while they try to kill me, giving Ming time to locate them and kill them.”
I nearly dropped the ice bag at my throat. “No.”
“Yes.” Her shoulders slumped. “Ming wants you alive. She finds you ‘important and of value,’ and she ‘owes two boons’ to you.” She sounded as if she quoted Ming.
Before I could formulate a reply stronger than my original “No,” she continued, this time sounding more formal.
“A dead body that had been rinsed in pure chlorine bleach was sitting upright at the front entrance when we woke tonight, like some kind of message. There was nothing on the security cam footage. It just appeared. None of us could find a scent on it anywhere. And, as good citizens of the city, we have given that body to PsyLED. Before Nell turns me down again, I have information you need.”
“What sort of information?” FireWind asked.
“Tomás de Torquemada wants the Blood Tarot. There were sixteen confirmed guards traveling with him. Three died tonight,and all three deaths have now been laid at my feet. Photographic confirmation of the kills has already been released, with photographs of Ming, standing with her hand on my head, as if she was giving me her blessing to begin my own blood clan. This ruse raises my standing among the Mithrans who can be challenged for land and territory and for access to Ming. My implied release and elevation in status indicates—incorrectly—that I am being given blood clan status in Knoxville, directly under her command. It divides her enemies, so that some will come after me and some will come after her. I, however, have no primo or secundo. I am a blood clan of one. I’ll have to take all challengers on one after the other.”
“I wasn’t born yesterday,” I said.
“You’re a baby,” she said dryly.
“You’re bait. She’s sending you to me to keep her enemies off her backside. She wants you to fight vampire duels on my land. No,” I said.
“Weare bait,” she corrected. “You were in those photographs as well, positioned in the shots to appear to be part of the deal.”
A vampire had made me part of her machinations. “No. Not on my land.”
“They’ll find your land eventually, regardless of where I am,” Yummy said. “Your magic is powerful and Torquemada wants anything and anyone powerful. He has always collected powerful creatures and forced them to work for his cause or to provide blood for him. Without me there, when they come for you, you will be alone. You and your sisters and the babies. And your Occam.”
My cat-man had once dated—dating being a euphemism for sex and blood exchange—Yummy. I wasn’t worried that Occam would cheat on me, but I also didn’t want to have to see them together on my land, because not so terribly long ago, before we became friends of a sort, Yummy had made it clear she was available if Occam ever wanted to go back to her.
“Ingram,” FireWind said. “If vampires can sense your land—”
