Cai laughed.
Ming stared at me. “Mmmmaaaaggot.”
I had pulled my weapon and aimed at Ming until I realized Aya was alone. I was closest to the door, so I grabbed my potted tree and ducked around the standoff, into the hallway, taking the L to the right. Aya aimed toward the exit doors. I grabbed a handful of Soulwood dirt, dropped it into a pocket, and placed the pot on the floor.
The vampire who entered through the roof entrance had stepped into my soil there. I knew where he was. I held up onefinger to FireWind, whispered, “He’s moving slowly.” I raced to the end of the short hallway.
Gunfire erupted from the conference room, but I didn’t turn to see.
FireWind fired.
I focused on the vampire coming toward me. When he appeared around the corner, I shot him, midcenter chest. He wasn’t expecting it, so he didn’t pop away. The single round was enough to take him down to one knee.
I got in two more shots as he rose and tried to make it back down the hallway. At least one more of the rounds hit him. He disappeared around the corner. His blood was on the floor, a trail I could sense. He was heading to the nearest window, which he opened and dropped from. Landed on the soil two stories below. My connection to him faded as he limped off.
The soil in my pocket felt warm. I ignored the sensation and turned to the fight in the hallway. Which was over. All the vampires were gone.
I was breathing too fast. My heart felt as if it would rip itself from my chest. I was deaf.
I walked toward the open L where FireWind had been standing.
There was a lot of blood. Occam came to me, and I saw his lips move. Asking me if I was okay. I nodded. “You?”
His lips moved again, and I lip-read, “Okay. Everyone is fine.”
That was wonderful, but it didn’t sound right. “No one got hurt? At all?”
Occam frowned. There was blood in his blond hair. “No. None of our people. And that’s mighty strange.”
Down the hallway, Aya and Rick were getting the interior door set in place and Margot and Occam—both extra-strong werecats—went to the roof to secure the door there. JoJo was on the phone talking to someone.
I was alone. I looked at my tree, still sitting on the hallway floor in its little pot. It looked fine. Except there was blood on the pot. I picked it up. I had no idea which vampire—or Cai—had contributed the blood. But they had attacked for no reason. And they hadn’t used weapons of any kind. They had just attacked, fists, claws, fangs, with no way to win against overwhelming numbers, silver rounds, and trained shooters.
That was really stupid.
Unless it was all a diversion. Holding the pot, I went back down the hallway to the place I had shot the vampire. I followed his blood trail down the connecting hallway and into the office where he had jumped. It was the fancy office once used solely by Rick and now currently shared by Rick and Aya. I stood in the entrance, thinking.
If they left a listening device, JoJo would find it. But if the vampire I shot—or one of the others—took something…
I walked back to FireWind, who was hammering at the doorframe with his fist to force it back onto its hinge, and asked, maybe too loudly, “Did you leave your computer on the desk in the office?”
FireWind whipped around so fast, I jumped back. He and Rick both strode down the hallway, turned on the lights, and stood in their office door. The desk was bare. The window was open. There was a smear of blood on the desk and the window casing.
My hearing was coming back, because I heard when FireWind said, “They can’t get into the laptop.”
Rick said, “We hope. This is a clear violation against PsyLED by the Master of the City. This should fall under the auspices of the Dark Queen.”
“Yellowrock is otherwise engaged.”
Rick’s voice was tight when he said, “Honeymoon. The ceremony was over a few hours after dusk.”
The pot waggled in my hands at that. Jane Yellowrock was married? How had I not known that? “Tonight? Coincidence?”
FireWind tilted his head, his braid sliding. “Interesting timing. We will report this up-line to the Department of Homeland Security, and to the proper Dark Queen channels. However, as no one was injured, we will not disturb the Dark Queen on her wedding night.” Aya looked back at his office. “In addition to working up this crime scene, we need to do a thorough sweep to see what else they may have taken, and what they left behind.”
I thought about poor Dora, and her lack of time off, and was glad I wasn’t the one who had to call her. Fortunately for everyone, she liked Rick, and since Rick had no social life to speak of and no romantic life anymore, he stuck around and charmed her.
The vampire visitors had taken a lot of rounds, silver rounds that meant they would have to have surgery to excise the silver-lead rounds and then receive copious amounts of blood to heal. And if Cai had been hit he would need the same. I wondered if Ming had been sane enough to plan for that in advance.
