Scrawny blinked at the phrase as if deciding how to react to its coarseness. I shrugged. It was what it was. “The rest of you follow, but don’t expect to see much. There will be a lot of smoke that’s painful to breathe and hurts your eyes. Try to hold your breath.” Right. Tell vamps to hold their breath. “Humans, I mean.
“Dacy,” I located the heir’s blue eyes and delicate form. She was like a doll, but a powerful master. Her eyes were bleeding to black in a slow, controlled manner, the sclera brightening to red at the same cautious speed. “If the girl is still alive, you start her transformation. If she’s gone”—I looked around—“then we’ll need these.” I passed out wooden stakes. “A belly thrust will immobilize them. Then, if Lincoln Shaddock, Blood Master of the Shaddock Clan wants, an appeal can be made to Leo for mercy. Or old Linc can stake them. If they get off the property, I’ll handle it alone.”
Dacy looked away, her eyes brimming with tears. Great. Now I was making them all cry. “If Lincoln was master of the city,” she said, “we would have a Mercy Blade to help us. We wouldn’t have to—” She stopped, and drew in a breath thick with tears. “We wouldn’t have to hurt our scions, risk their deaths.” She dashed a hand across her cheeks, leaving blood smears.
“Dacy,” I said gently, still holding out the stakes, “Mercy Blades don’t chase down freed young rogues. They only”—I searched for a kind word—“help out with the long chained.” Help out. Right. Help out as in stake and behead them while they lay chained to a bed. But I didn’t say it. Go me. “If your chained ones killed a human, then they’re rogues. But I won’t kill them if I can help it.” She stared at me in surprise. As slowly as a human, she took the stakes and passed them to the scions, her motions reflected in the huge windows to my right. I handed more to the humans, reminding them to belly thrust.
I led the way into Lincoln’s bedroom and jutted my chin, indicating the hidden door. Scrawny and Pickersgill took up position, Pickersgill at the side that opened, Scrawny on the hinged side, which I figured was smart. If Scrawny had a chance, she might get in my way. “Turn off the lights inside. And be sure to turn them on after the flashbang goes off.” I thought for a moment, wondering if I had left out anything. Probably.
“On three,” I said. I rotated my head on my neck and stretched my throwing arm. “One.” I reached deep, drawing on Beast-speed and strength. Pulled the pin. “Two.” I reared back. “Three.” The door opened so fast I didn’t see it move. The flashbang flew, ballistic, into the unlit room. The door slammed shut with an explosive gust of air. I covered my ears, just in case. So did the others. We could hear the detonation and the resultant screams even through the heavy door. Vamps who are dying, or think they are, give a piercing, eardrum-bursting shriek, like the love child of a screech owl and a mountain lion on crystal meth, amplified like a seventies rock band. Drawing two wood stakes, I said, “Open.” The door opened even faster than before, the lights blazing overhead, turning the noxious smoke inside into a thick cloud.
I launched myself into the scion lair. Smoke stinging my eyes, burning my nose. A naked form rushed out of the smoke, vamp-fast. I swept a leg forward and around and followed the rogue down with a belly stab, midcenter, deep enough to hit the descending aorta. Vamp blood sprayed out over me. I braced for a burn, but there was no chemical sting from the splatters. He was down. I left the stake in his belly and pulled another. I caught a flash of silver as a net was tossed over a female form. Three rogues came at me, vamped out, small fangs snapped down. Their pupils were smaller than a human’s at noon on a desert. They were effectively blind, but their nostrils were wide, sniffing, their breathing fast. I stabbed, took a step, thrust, pulled a new stake, stepped, thrust.
I’d taken down six, with eight stakes, when I realized that I should have counted the chained or thought to ask how many there were. Crap. Stupid, rookie mistake. I slammed my back against a cage, facing two vamps who came at me in concert. It wasn’t the usual mindless action of a rogue. These two were older than the others, their fangs longer, whiter. And they could see. They hesitated a fraction of a second, half a heartbeat. One dodged in. The other kicked out. I blocked the first one. Took the kick in the knee joint. Something popped. The world tilted. I went down.
A net flashed over the one who’d kicked me, glittering silver. He squealed like a pig being slaughtered. The other one fell on my injured leg. I smelled his hunger, his need. I was out of stakes. Training and instinct took over. I stabbed up with a vamp-killer, into the notch below his sternum. And remembered midstrike that I wasn’t supposed to kill him yet. I adjusted aim halfway in, trying to avoid a heart-thrust with the silvered blade. He grunted and slid from me. Curled up on the floor in the fetal position. Panting, mewling. I took a breath and started coughing, even as I pulled more blades.
Overhead, fans and the AC had come on, sucking out the smoke and the reek of vamp blood, filling the room with clean but frigid air. As the smoke cleared, I could see. It was all over.
Naked vamps were lying everywhere, most curled into the fetal position, bleeding profusely, their blood running across the stone floor to the central drain. Scarlet had been sprayed over the ceiling, walls, and cell bars like some kind of postmodernist paint job. Three blood-servants were down, all getting blood-sips and healing tongue-laving from the scions, which creeped me out, even though I’d been on the receiving end of healing laves and knew their benefits. One scion was holding his back as if he’d taken a tumble. He was feeding off Pickersgill, the two men in an embrace that made me feel like a voyeur. Scrawny was in a cell feeding a vamp, Amy Lynn cradling them both like babies. The girl was the one who had been weeping when I was here last. Now, her needlelike fangs were buried in her mother’s wrist, getting an infusion of vamp blood from mommy dearest.
I swiveled to my butt, and stretched out my right leg with both hands. It had been kicked and slashed by vamp claws, and it hurt. Blood coated my palm, not pumping, thankfully, so not arterial, but still a lot of blood. Some vamp-baby had hit a big vein. I wouldn’t be walking on it. Not until I shifted. But all the scions were down, all were alive, and miracle of miracles, the girl, Sarah, was being fed Dacy’s blood. I could make out a pulse beneath her ear, weak and too fast. She swallowed. I blew out a laugh and remembered to breathe. Pain radiated up and down my leg. Crap. This is bad. Good for the vamps. But bad for—
“Jane! The front door is open.” Grizzard stuck his head into the scion lair.
Dacy looked around, counting. “One got out.”
“Thomas.” There was dread in Pickersgill’s voice, and I couldn’t imagine what might alarm a vamp who had lived through the cold war, the Cuban missile crisis, and the death of President Kennedy, as well as all the post 9-11 stuff.
I really didn’t want to know, but I asked anyway. “What’s so bad about Thomas?”
Pickersgill said, “He was Lincoln’s primo blood-servant until he was injured in the line of duty and Linc brought him over. He’s been sane for three years, but he . . . uh—”
“He’s a Naturaleza,” Dacy stated tonelessly. “We didn’t know until he came out of devoveo.”
“Well, crap,” I whispered. The Naturaleza believed that they had a right to hunt and kill humans, just because they were at the top of the food chain. They were way more dangerous than any rogue, because they were thinking, intelligent, sociopathic killers, often with resources like safe houses and bank accounts their masters didn’t know about. If Shaddock had known, Thomas would never have been turned. He would have been allowed to die a normal human death, or been put down. If he was sane, and hadn’t yet killed a human, then he didn’t fall under the category of young-rogue, therefore he wasn’t mine to hunt until I was asked, and I wasn’t sure who was supposed to hunt him. Things had just FUBARed. I pulled a length of leather off a thigh strap and bound my injured knee, almost gagging with the pain, but the bleeding slowed. I rolled to one hip, pulled my phone, and speed-dialed Leo. He answered on the first ring.