With this guy, I didn’t waste words, just pulled a throwing knife and let the overhead lights glint off it. When I spoke it came out in a lower-register Beast-growl. “Who ordered you and your pal to attack me?”
Tattooed Dude snarled at me. I flicked the knife. I’d been aiming at TD’s hand, but caught him higher up, the blade entering between the two bones of his lower arm and sticking into the wall at his back. He squealed like a stuck pig and Edmund was on him.
The squeal stopped, choked off. Edmund plucked the knife away and rode TD to the floor, perching atop the big guy’s chest like a small raptor on the chest of a larger, fallen prey. Edmund drank once long and deeply, from the cut arm, his hand making a rotating “get on with it” motion to me.
“Who ordered you and your pal to attack?”
Edmund gave me the sign again, which I figured meant he had the answer. Dang, the guy was fast. Below him, Tattooed Dude relaxed as he gave in to the feeding and the compulsion of a master vamp. Edmund might no longer be a clan master, but he’d lost none of his skills.
“Were you supposed to kill or just injure?” At the hand signal again, I sped up my questions. “What was on the blade? Poison? What herbs? Where did the concoction come from? Was a witch involved? Did Grégoire know about the attack?” Ed shot me a glance of ire but didn’t break contact with the prisoner. “Did Dominique know? Did Adrianna know? Did anyone in Clan Arceneau know about the attack? Did anyone at this compound know? Are there any more attacks planned against the Master of the City? Are there other attacks planned against me or those I claim as mine?”
Edmund’s eyes shot to me and he withdrew his fangs. He lifted the hand still holding the knife and checked his watch. “Get to your home, Enforcer. They are there now.”
I said something crude, grabbed the knife that was covered with my attacker’s blood, and raced out the door. Wrassler, back from running errands for Del, was on my heels, and for a big guy, he managed to nearly keep up with me, talking through his headset mic as we ran. “Secure the premises,” he said into the mic. “Lock down!” But when I reached the front door I slammed the bloody knife tip into the table that held the trays for weapons and cursed again. “I don’t have a car or my bike.”
“I’ll drive,” Wrassler said, pushing ahead of me and out the door. We dove into an armored SUV, the powerful engine turning over. The roadway in front of HQ was wreathed in mist, the fog rising from the Mississippi and enfolding the entire French Quarter. Streetlights were halos of yellow, the mist capturing the light and keeping it close. Spell or natural, it made no difference. It would make fighting harder.
Wrassler drove like a maniac and we were at my place before my heart rate could settle. He braked about a hundred feet out. The street was silent, no radios played, no music or TV came through windows, no people wandered the pavement, drunk or homeless or bored. “This don’t look right,” he said.
The street in front and the houses to either side of my freebie house were free of fog, as a cold wind shunted through, dropping down from above, swirling around, and blasting away. With Beast-sight, I could see sparks of green in the wind; I heard distant flute music and a slow tapping, like a drum. It was Big Evan, warding the house with air magic.
Kits attacked in den, Beast hissed at me. Kits not safe!
I pulled my cell and called Eli. “Jane,” he answered.
“We’re out front. What have they done and how many are there?”
“They firebombed the house. Evan put it out, but it was risky. Wind tried to fan the flames at first. Four targets that I can see with low light. Two vamps, two humans.”
Firebomb? Again? I needed to get a magical something put over the siding so it wouldn’t burn. Low light meant he was using his toys to see in the dark. “Witches working with them?”
“Not so I could tell.” A moment later, he said, “Evan says he can’t sense anyone. The fog seems natural, coming off the Mississippi.”
“Kids?”
“Asleep in the safe room. Front door is my twelve. Tangos are four, total. Human encoms are two: at two o’clock, on the side of the neighbor’s house, and at six o’clock, outside the fence. Evan says that the human in back is coming over the wall. Vamp encoms are two: standing on the wall at our six, and standing hidden in the edge of the fog, in the street at twelve. I say again, four tangos.” Tango was Eli’s shorthand for unknown human or supernat targets. Encom was Eli’s shorthand for enemy combatants, which meant they were armed.
“Okay. I’ll take the front.” I pulled my vamp-killer and palmed the blade that had cut Tattooed Dude. And smiled. “Tell Evan to let the fog closer at the street. I’m out.” I closed the phone.
“Human at the side of the house next door, there.” I pointed for Wrassler. “The space between houses is something like six feet, so it’s close quarters. I’m going after a vamp in front of the door, hidden in the fog.”
“I’ll take the human.” Wrassler turned off the engine, leaving the vehicle parked in the middle of the street. Reached up and disabled the interior lights, drawing a long-barreled semiautomatic with the other hand. “Go.”
I went, sliding out of the SUV, leaving the door open. Beast rammed her power and vision into my bloodstream, adrenaline like a drug, speeding my heartbeat. Her night vision sharpened my own, the night glowing silver and green with tints of blue. The vamp standing in the fog was a warmer shade of pale melon, his body heat, slightly warmer than the fog, making him nearly glow. This was something I hadn’t ever seen before, and I realized that Evan’s spell must have now included a search out vamp component. Nice. Moving on little cat feet—which made me want to laugh—I circled around the vamp so I was downwind. He smelled of gasoline and the sharp stink of struck matches. If I’d been in Beast-form, my ruff would have stood on end.
I tossed the bloody knife through the fog, to land at his feet with a clank.
Distraction of blood scent and noise.
CHAPTER 8
B-b-b-b-bad to the Bone
The clatter and the smell of blood shocked the vamp, and he crouched. I was already launching myself through the air, right at him, intending to knock him to his back and place the blade at his throat. Beast took over the leap. The vamp and I collided, almost gently, my open left hand catching his right shoulder, gripping hard, my right hand moving across his body with a fast swipe, like claws. No! I thought at her. Alive! But I couldn’t wrench control away.
The blade caught his throat just below his larynx. My momentum and mass-in-motion carried the sharp edge through his tissue with only the slightest resistance, to jar into his spine.
We hit the ground and I tucked, rolling across him, letting go the vamp-killer handle to keep from damaging him any more. Bending my arms to take the fall, cradling my head down, curling my spine into the somersault and instantly up to my feet. I was splattered with vamp blood, cool and sticky on my skin. He hadn’t fed recently, which ruled out Naturaleza vamp.
I smelled the silver that finished the job of killing him true-dead. No one to question. I snarled at Beast, I needed to question him.