I went back to the date. If the history of Lucas Vazquez de Allyon was correct, he would have been alive back then. Just because his name was Spanish now didn’t mean he hadn’t traveled, or even been Italian—Roman—originally. As I worked, the smell of coffee filled the house, rich, dark, and wonderful. Too bad that coffee smelled so much better than it tasted to me.
Trying to block out smells and the small sounds made by men moving around in my house, I translated segments on blood-feuds, spending two hours before I realized that, basically, a blood-feud was a no-holds-barred free-for-all with winner take all. This one would be blamed on me for killing a man who had likely been intending to murder me the first chance he got.
“Jane,” Alex called from the kitchen. “I got something.”
I put the laptop to sleep and went to the kitchen, stretching on the way in. In the kitchen, I discovered where the coffee smell originated. The men taking over my life had purchased an espresso coffeemaker, a fancy stainless steel version by DeLonghi. According to the box at the back door, the thing cost nearly a thousand bucks. I hoped I hadn’t paid for that.
Before I studied the info Alex had, I put tea together. While the tea water sizzled on the stove top, I pulled up a chair near Stinky. Who definitely was not getting any fast food today. “Show me,” I said.
“Lucas Vazquez de Allyon purchased property in several states, including Louisiana last year. He has property in New Orleans, in Lafayette, and in some little towns between Lafayette and here. I put them on a map.”
It was a melded map, showing topo, streets and street names, bayous, rivers, airports, bus stations, and a lot of other stuff I would need if I had to go to each of them hunting him. “Have you found de Allyon yet?”
“No, but I’m close.”
“Good. Now go take a shower. You’re living up to your nickname.” At his puzzled look, I said. “Stinky. I’ve named you Stinky and it’ll stay Stinky until you remember to shower every day.”
“And when I remember?” he asked, sounding belligerent.
“Then it’ll be Kid.”
“Like Kid Rock?”
“More like Billy the Kid, Cisco Kid, the Durango Kid.” When he still looked puzzled, I said, “Do an Internet search. And it’s a crying shame when an American teenage boy doesn’t know his gunslingers.” I slapped him on the back of the head. “Good work, Stinky.”
I finished making my tea and went back to my laptop. Shortly, I heard footsteps up the stairs and then shower water going. “The Durango Kid? He’s a modern-day shooter.”
I looked up to see Eli standing in front of the open bookcase. He had a habit of standing with his arms loose, one hand near the spot where a military sidearm might go, the other on his thigh where he might wear a military knife. “Yeah. A cowboy six-shooter. There was an old black-and-white film about the Durango Kid.”
“You watch old black-and-white cowboy films.” It was said with a hint of disbelief.
“Yeah. The kind where your people kill off my people and steal our land, and somehow make murder and theft seem heroic.”
A hint of amusement twinkled into Eli’s eyes in response to my sarcasm. He said, “My people? You mean the mongrels of society? I have ancestors who were slaves and ancestors who owned slaves.”
He was of mixed blood, mixed race, which I had suspected from his skin tone. Alex was much paler than Eli. Maybe they were half brothers? I brought my mind back to the conversation and tilted my head to show he had made his point.
“You’re good with Alex,” he said. “We were doing nothing but fighting about him showering.” The twinkle bled away. After a moment he said, “We were fighting about everything, actually.”
“Yeah. You treat him like a son or a soldier, instead of like a brother. He wants you to like him and admire him and love him. Maybe in that order.”
“Hmmph,” Eli said. “And you know this about families when you were raised in a children’s home?”
That could have been intended to be snide or even hurtful, but the look on his face was simply puzzled. I squelched the retort budding on my lips. I didn’t explain about my early years very often, mainly because it sometimes brought the memories back, like a tsunami, overwhelming, overpowering, visceral, and intense. With Alex’s ability to ferret out info on the Web, it wasn’t a surprise that the brothers knew about my history. “I came out of the woods at age twelve, give or take, with no language, no social skills, no nothing. I watched the body language and interactions between the kids and the adults in the home long before I could understand what they were saying. Tone and intent were clear enough even to the outsider. Your tone and body language say you don’t trust him. Your tone and body language say you are the boss and he better listen to you or else.”
“Yeah? So?”
“What do you mean So?” Men can be so obtuse sometimes. “He’s not a soldier under your command. This is family, not the army. And Alex doesn’t understand that you love him and want to protect him and that’s why you are all over him like white on rice. Tell him you like him. Tell him you admire what he can do. And back off and let him make mistakes. He’ll respect you more for it. Sheesh.” I went back to my research. Eli tucked his thumbs in his pockets and meandered up the stairs, I hoped to play nice-nice with his baby brother.
Before dark, Alex sent me an e-mail with an attachment, and stood over me with a half-proud, half-sheepish grin as I opened the document he’d sent. As I studied the file, he fidgeted, sitting down, standing up, roaming around and around the room. Without looking up, I said, “Stop. Light somewhere. Explain this to me.”
“It’s how Lucas Vazquez de Allyon is making some vamps sick when they to go Blood-Call for a date, without letting his Typhoid Mary out of his sight.”
I felt lighter, as if someone had just taken a lead overcoat off me. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. Proof that Blood-Call has everything to do with the sick master vamps.”
I leaned back in my chair and said, “Okay. Shoot. Convince me.”
An hour later, I realized that the Kid had hacked into another government agency and found something in the CDC’s employee files that might help lead us to someone who could heal all the sick vamps in the nation—proof of what the plague really was, and how it had been developed—because it wasn’t something that had appeared naturally. Alex was grinning like a trained monkey, and I smiled back. “Not bad. Not bad at all.”
“So, do I rate a Big Mac?”
“Nope. The lady had to tell you to shower,” Eli said from the opening to the safe room. “But you did good, kid. Real good. I’m proud of you.” Eli turned back without waiting to see what effect his words had on Alex. The Kid glowed pink from his palms to his ear tips. I managed not to grin, which might have spoiled it for him, and nodded instead, my eyes on the screen. “What he said. Good work.”
“Okay. Okay, then.” Alex stood, bristling with energy, with purpose, with poorly concealed delight. “I’ll have a cup of coffee. You want one, Eli? Jane, you want tea?”
“Sure,” we both said at the same time. Eli tipped his head around the door just enough to see his brother go into the kitchen. When the Kid was gone, Eli tilted his head at me in thanks. And I realized that, maybe, we had just become a team. Turning away, I called a high-level parley at Katie’s.
Alex, showing his nerves by the way one knee jerked spasmodically, stood in front of a specially picked small group of vamps and humans. I stood over to the side, where I had a good view of every person in the group. Leo, who I wanted to stake on sight or curl up at his feet, sat front and center in a padded chair that looked like a throne. Katie, his heir, Grégoire, his second heir should Katie predecease him, Troll, Grégoire’s B-twins, Brandon and Brian, all the clan heads still alive after the battle, and a smattering of humans and servants sat or stood around the walls. The room was crowded, even with the silver cages removed and the furniture back in place, and over it all rode the half-muted tingle of power and the scent of Leo Pellissier, peppery parchment, still tainted with the faint, fermented hint of too much blood. It made me grind my teeth, and I had to breathe slowly to keep my heart rate from speeding and betraying my emotional state. The MOC didn’t look my way, to see if I was okay, or still hurt from his attack.