Around us, Shoffru’s vamps converged into a semicircle, starting to form a pincer movement, or a constriction like the mouth of bag drawn tight, to enclose us. Adrianna had vamped out, eyes wide black pupils in bloody red sclera. Her fingers were clawed with razor-sharp talons.
From the doorway, I heard booted feet, and the mixed scents of Derek’s men blended into the room. Shoffru’s people hesitated, and the pirate seemed to know his rebellion had been anticipated. “The world is always changing,” Shoffru said. “Only the strong survive the evolution of life.”
“Jackie’s a philosopher as well as a pirate captain,” I said. “Good. It’ll help when Leo bares your throat and drinks.” His pupils widened into black holes. He didn’t vamp out. I gave him that. He stayed in control. “Tell your girl to sit this one out.”
“Adrianna, my love,” he said. “Please await me.”
The nutso vamp hissed in displeasure, but she lowered her talons.
I said, “Let’s go, Jackie. Move slow. It’s like a dance, but you follow my lead without touching me or the blade slides home to nestle into your cervical spine. Got it?”
Shoffru didn’t nod—not with my blade so close—but he did school his face in agreement.
I led Shoffru to the center of the dance floor, where Leo waited, Bruiser beside him. From the corner of my eye, I saw Wrassler standing behind Adrianna, and her facade was not the happy-camper face of a partygoer. It was the fang-down expression of a wanna-kill-something suckhead. I figured that Wrassler had a blade to her kidney. Good. And Derek had weapons leveled at Shoffru’s peeps. Even better. Gee DiMercy stood to the side, watching the little game like an interested spectator.
We reached the center of the room, and when I felt Bruiser’s body heat at my back, I stepped away, letting Shoffru go. Leo and Bruiser had him boxed in like a layer of vamp jelly between two slices of deadly bread. I walked to Wrassler, blades still out, and said into my mic, “Play us some music, something dangerous,” knowing that Angel would hear. Just before I reached the traitor, the opening strains of “All I Wanted” by Temporary Empire began to play, soft and low. It wasn’t what I had asked for, but the heartache in the song fit my own broken heart, pulling the anguish to the surface again. It played softly, at the edges of my hearing.
Grief and anger warred with a killing lust deep inside me as I reached Adrianna. “Hello, dead woman,” I said. “I’ll have your blood on my hands soon.”
“Oh no, Enforcer,” Gee DiMercy said by my ear. I hadn’t felt him on my trail and I almost flinched, but I held it down, as if my other half had known of his presence. “That particular joy will be mine,” he said.
I laughed, the sound only slightly louder than the near-silent music. “I’ll fight you for it, Mercy Blade. But later.” I whirled, my skirts spinning out around me, and I turned to the center of the room, giving Adrianna my back, in what any predator could only assume to be an insult, and I heard her hiss at the affront.
In the center of the room, Jack Shoffru stood before Leo. The MOC of New Orleans placed his hand on Jack’s shoulder and pressed down. Jack’s upper lip curled in resistance and his body locked upright. At the edge of my vision, the swordswoman snarled, her body poised to draw and fight, her expression suspicious and confused.
The announcer said softly, “Jacques Shoffru, turned by François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture, leader of the revolution in Saint Domingue. Survivor of the Purge of New Orleans, whereby two of the Domingue clans were slaughtered. Captain of the privateering vessels: the Ring Leader and the Lady’s Virtue. Copartner with Jean Lafitte in the Whale’s Tale Enterprises in New Orleans.” Jack, locked beneath Leo’s hand, looked as though he’d break a sweat if vamps did that kinda thing. Leo looked as if he were pushing down on a flower stalk, two fingers on Jack’s shoulder. The overhead speakers went on. “Once, secondo heir in the now decimated Clan Rousseau. Currently, and for two centuries, Master of the City of Veracruz and Cancún, Mexico, and all hunting territories between. Seeking supplicant status from the Master of the City of New Orleans.”
Shoffru’s knees buckled. The vamp with all the interesting titles dropped to the floor at Leo’s feet. Leo now had one hand on his enemy’s shoulder; the other palm went to Shoffru’s forehead, pushing the pirate’s head back, elongating his throat. The posture was one of total submission, though it didn’t really look as if Jackie was feeling very submissive. More as if he’d been forced that way, fighting it with everything he had. Leo, on the other hand, moved with effortless grace. And the MOC hadn’t even pulled any power from the clans. Go, Leo. “Do you yield and surrender?” Leo asked softly.
Adrianna hissed again, but so did all the vamps that had come with the pirate, and it sounded like surprise. I looked around to verify that impression and saw that Leo’s people were surprised too. So . . . yield and surrender meant . . . what, to a vamp?
Leo said, “My Enforcer, attend me.”
All of a sudden, I didn’t like this, not one bit. I still had my weapons out, however, and I stepped slowly to the center of the room, my dancing shoes making soft taps on the wood floor. I stopped three feet away and waited, but Leo didn’t acknowledge me, so I said, “I’m here.”
Leo didn’t respond to me but repeated his question to Shoffru. “Do you yield and surrender?”
Shoffru ground out, “For now. Yes.”
“For one decade,” Leo said. “Or until we meet in formal Blood Challenge—which will be at a time of my choosing.”
And then I got it. Somehow Leo had brought the wording of a Blood Challenge into the little tableau, and also somehow, that meant Jack was well and truly beaten, even though he was accepted by the MOC of New Orleans. The only leeway I thought might be in the wording was in the weapons used. Leo had claimed the time. Jack could choose the weapons.
“I yield,” Jack said, “and surrender my titles and territories and cattle, for a time of ten years, or until I defeat you in formal Blood Challenge, at the time of your choosing.”
Before Jack even finished speaking, Leo vamped out. He sank his fangs into Shoffru’s throat. I turned away, making a point of watching Adrianna and Jack’s peeps, not really wanting to watch Leo drink anyone down.
My throat tightened as my own memories surfaced again. Fangs at my throat. The priestess holding my head. Bruiser stretched out beside me, as much a prisoner as I had been. I shoved the memory away, deep down, into the recesses of the black cavern that was my soul. But I couldn’t block out the sound of Leo drinking, flesh on flesh, soft sounds of swallowing. Before me, Adrianna was led off into the night by Wrassler and Gee.
I whispered, “Turn up the music, Angel.”
Around me the raspy voice of Keeb, the lead singer from Temporary Empire, rose, the lyrics weeping into the air, “. . . . Everything is quiet, everything is calm. Everyone’s a riot. Softer than a psalm.” Behind me, I felt heat and warmth. And I knew Bruiser stood there, not touching, but there. Waiting. The band was a little-known one out of North Carolina. Only Bruiser would have thought to find it for me. Only Bruiser would have cared enough to find it. But Bruiser wasn’t who I wanted.
I sucked down a breath and forced the tears away. Damn you. Damn you, Rick LaFleur. How had I let him do this to me again? I was an idiot. But I didn’t have to stay one. It might take me several tries to learn a lesson, but it was well and truly learned this time. No matter how strong the mating magic and mating pheromones were, he could have resisted. He could have. I’d never trust Rick LaFleur again. Never let him into my life again. And the lyrics moaned, “. . . you’re all I ever wanted in this world. You’re all I ever needed . . .”
Never again.
Never.
• • •
The rest of the night went by in a blur. Shoffru accepting the terms of his servitude. Leo and Jack toasting each other with humans to sip from. Adrianna not reappearing. Vamps dancing while drinking from their human partners. Humans drinking hard, partying as if there would be no dawn.
Me, not crying. Not crying.
Not crying. Not where anyone could see.
• • •
It was nearly four a.m., and everyone was gone except the humans too drunk to drive, and the vamps who were inebriated from drinking from the drunk humans, and they were all being offered rooms and bunks and lairs to sleep it off.
I went to see what the cameras had caught, watching the night’s anomalies over and over. I was certain it was more than one. The first one was quick. Someone or something—maybe more than one—had gotten inside HQ through my great security plan. The blur was a prism of colors, like light diffused. That one had injured Derek’s man—had appeared on three cameras, knocking out Vodka Sunrise’s tooth, leaving him dazed on the floor, before heading up to the guest quarters, and being turned around by Derek’s armed men, who admitted to seeing something but had no idea what it was. Then the swirling bands of light had rushed out through the front doors and into the parking area. A final camera saw the blur jumping the gate. Not human. That one had been something unknown.
Another one had moved through the hallways, jamming the cameras, and out the front door as if chasing after it. The security guys stationed there hadn’t seen or noticed anything, though the doors opened and closed right beside them. Magic. A don’t-see-me spell. And then it reversed and raced back through HQ, to the ballroom, where it disappeared.
And I still had no freaking idea what was going on in New Orleans. Not a hint. Until I walked the hallways where the blur had raced and the spell had taken place. And I smelled magic and blood. The dry burned magic of a dark practitioner. It smelled like Shoffru, except the pirate had hadn’t left my sight or Leo’s sight all night. Someone was with him every moment. So it couldn’t be him. Could it have been the woman with the sword? Had that been how she got into HQ carrying a weapon? Crap. It wasn’t just a don’t-see-me; it was mixed with a forget-me spell. And it was a good one. Even now I had to struggle to remember her.
