I whirled to Shaddock. Only moments had passed, but the vamp looked older and weaker, oddly withered. He had a wooden stake buried in his middle, and three humans in black jeans and tees holding him down. He wasn’t fighting. His scions stood around him empty-handed. “I yield,” he said tiredly. “I yield.”
“You will call Grégoire, Leo’s emissary,” I said, “and offer apologies.” I pulled every formal word I could think of and said, “You will grovel at his feet in shame and fear, in dishonor and ignominy. And this once, I’ll back you, by telling Grégoire that you were under attack by enemies of the parley. This once. After that, I’ll slit your throat, cut off your head, and toss your body to the human protestors. And hope Dacy is better prepared to resist a pretty face. You’ll be true-dead. Do you understand?”
“I do.” He looked at me, his fangs clicked back, his eyes human, or nearly so. Confusion flooded through him, so strong I could smell it. “What happened? What did I do?”
Crap. He really didn’t know what he had done. “You let a witch spell you. And I’ve saved you the one and only time.”
I followed Lincoln back to the hotel, where I guided him to Grégoire’s suite, his elbow firmly in my grip. Inside the suite, he fell on his face, prostrate, and begged the forgiveness of Grégoire and Grégoire’s master in language so flowery and archaic, I didn’t even bother to try to understand it. The delicate elegant vamp looked at me in utter surprise. I managed a small smile and tilted my head, suggesting with body language that Grégoire accept the apology. He stood, snapped down on his vest points, bent at the waist, and pulled the taller, heavier vamp to his feet as if he weighed two pounds. Grégoire was an elder master, and size was no indication of might in an old vampire. He looked at me.
“He was attacked,” I said, trying to think how I could make this part sound as formal and fancy as I needed, to maybe save the negotiations and Shaddock’s butt. “He was spelled by a witch, with an amulet created by Renee and Tristan Damours and their brother. It’s black magic powerful enough to cloud the mind of a master vam—Mithran. The . . . culprit”—yeah, that was a good word—“will be dealt with.”
“Is this so?” Grégoire asked Shaddock.
The tall, craggy-faced vamp looked at me in surprise. In spite of my promise, he hadn’t been expecting me to defend him. “Yes.”
Grégoire focused on me, his eyes slowly bleeding black in scarlet sclera. “I charge you—when this parley is over, you will find this culprit and bring her to me.”
A cold chill I had been fighting all evening shot through me. I was so screwed. And Evangelina was so dead. But if I disagreed, Derek would be given the job; Derek would bring him Evil Evie without a qualm, and when she died, the spell she had snared her sisters in would implode. Molly might die. By agreeing, I was sealing my own fate and destroying my friendship with Molly forever. She had forgiven a lot over the years, but turning her sister over to the vamps for punishment would be the last straw. Already trying to find a way out, I nodded.
Grégoire stared me down—quite a feat for a vamp a foot shorter than me, and I realized he was waiting for me to do something. Like bow? I narrowed my eyes at him. No way am I going to—
“You may set your minions on the financial search,” he said. His words were clipped but there was an amused twist to his lips, as if he knew what I was thinking. Maybe he did. I texted Evangelina’s particulars to Reach, my research guy when I could afford him, with a vamp request to provide a financial background on her. With what Reach charged vamps for info, he could plan a trip to the Caymans on the proceeds from this one job.
The rest of the night I watched the proceedings in Grégoire’s hotel suite, dressed in jeans and boots and drinking tea by the potful to stay awake. The remnant of the hurricane crashed outside the windows. The hired help was jumpy, sliding their eyes away each time one met my gaze, obviously remembering everything I had done in the last twenty-four hours that a human couldn’t. It was sad, and likely to be a problem in the future, but there was nothing I could do about it. I wasn’t human. I never had been, despite the times I had tried to deny it to myself. I was having to deal with it, so Derek and his men could too. A much bigger worry was how I could convince Molly that her eldest sister was doing black magic, when Evie had a coven master’s rights over her. I wasn’t certain about any of the particulars. I knew only one thing. Evangelina had to be dealt with. Somehow.
By dawn, I was beyond exhausted. Back in my room, I showered, dressed in a pair of boy-shorts undies and a tank, and curled into the mattress, pulling the thick comforter over me. Rain pounded at the window. Wind pulsed like the cold breath of the devil.
I was about to close my eyes on the world when I remembered to check the Weather Channel so I could adjust security considerations for the rain. Instead, the TV came on with local a.m. news. A pretty young announcer was saying, “. . . claims he found a campsite deep in the Pisgah National Forest that had been attacked by predators. The teenaged hiker claimed that the site was an old one with the remains of at least two people, located in a deep declivity with a narrow feeder creek at the bottom. This description matches the previous attack sites enough that the sheriff department and park service has sent out searchers. So far, however, park rangers have not found the site, and some are calling the claim into question, wondering if the allegation was something the teenager dreamed up for attention.”
The shot changed to a sign for the Pisgah National Forest, rain slamming down, making a spray with its force. The voice-over said, “This latest mauling and gruesome death is said to be older than the previously discovered campsites, but isn’t far from the campsite at Paint Rock. In each of these cases, the campers were all killed.”
Adrenaline tried to spurt into my system, but instead of increased heart rate, I felt only dispirited apprehension, the anxiety like a sore tooth rather than a raging fight or flight response.
The TV camera shot expanded to reveal the entrance to the park, and focused in on a group of drenched backpackers, who were clearly leaving. The shot changed again to a close-up of three twenty-somethings, the rain-soaked man in the middle speaking for them all. “You expect some element of danger any time you camp, man, but this is worse than anything I ever faced out west, and I used to camp in grizzly territory.”
The girl said, “Yeah, we’re outta here. My parents said if I didn’t leave, they’d come up here and drag me home.”
The announcer came back on and said, “Park and county officials have suggested that campers leave, and are making sure that every camper who stays understands the risks. They had already instituted a check-in system for every hiker and camper, every day, and the numbers of new campers have dwindled to nothing. Until the marauding creatures are trapped and destroyed, the tourist dollars in Buncombe and surrounding counties will dry up to nothing.”
I muted the TV. Groaning, I rolled out of bed and to my feet. So much for sleep today. As I dressed, rain and wind beat at the windows. Oh goody. A hunt in the middle of a hurricane. I didn’t have that misery even when I lived in New Orleans. This was sooo gonna suck.
It didn’t take much to obtain Grizzard’s permission to join the hunt. The sheriff looked worn and wan and beaten, his body odor telling me that he was running on adrenaline, caffeine, and not much else. He’d have given me permission to join if I’d shown up dressed in a chicken suit, he was that tired and that worried. He gave me his personal cell phone number and a GPS unit and waved me off just as the downpour increased intensity.
I ignored the teenaged hiker’s directions and started down the mountain at a different incline from where the other searchers were working. The kid had gotten confused getting back to the park path, but the stench of his fear and the putrid scent of old blood and rotten meat led me down at the proper angle. I hadn’t expected to be hiking in the rain on this gig and hadn’t sent my water-resistant clothing ahead to the hotel. Torrents of water cascaded from the sky, aiming directly down my collar. I was soaked to the skin in minutes, grousing under my breath. This is Leo’s fault. Totally Leo’s fault. And Bruiser’s. Yeah. His fault too.