Dark Queen (Jane Yellowrock #12)

I finally got the lock open and dashed inside, into chaos and screaming and commotion. Edmund—up after dawn, probably only because of the storm and the darkness it gave the day—and Eli were fighting a woman, both men covered in blood, as were the walls and the floor. With the two of them fighting together they should have killed an attacker in the first two seconds and they hadn’t. Yet, this wasn’t a sparring match. It was too bloody for that. Their opponent was a blond vamp, all claws and talons and rage. It was a testament to my exhaustion that I didn’t even blink at the brawl, though did think that it would be a pain in the butt to get the blood off the walls. Again. But I did smell lemons.

I opened my mouth and let the flavor of her blood flow over my tongue and the roof of my mouth as I slouched in the entry, watching, trying to remember the vamp. And then it hit me. Bruiser’s scion. Nicolle. I frowned, not able to remember her last name, if I’d ever heard it. Bruiser had drained her energies and taken her memories and then gifted her to Ed. I had no idea where Ed had been keeping her, but somewhere not close enough. Someone had gotten to her and claimed her for Clan Des Citrons.

I parsed the scents, smelling lemons and the sharp, sour, stagnant pond scent of madness. Her wrists and ankles bore ligature scars the way vamps’ skin looked when it had been burned by silver.

“Where is she?” Nicolle screamed. “I’ll rip her heart out!”

I figured she meant me. Just a wild guess.

Ed vaulted across the kitchen table, his talons ripping at her. More blood on the walls. Crap. If the lemon clan set her free and tracked her, then they knew where we lived. If she had gotten away—which her scarring suggested—then if I shifted to blood hound, I could follow her back to them. If I was willing to risk losing myself to the hunt and never finding myself again. Becoming blood hound was dangerous.

Beast thought at me, Ugly dog. Good nose. Do not want to be ugly dog tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

I slid my hands into the slits in my clothing and pulled weapons. A wood stake and a semiautomatic nine-mil. It was loaded with regular ammo, but it should slow her down. Nicolle was a young-ish vamp and they tended to be less resistant to weapons of all kinds.

I hesitated, remembering the path of blood Aggie had shown that I was treading. But. I wasn’t killing. I was swatting down a crazy-assed vamp.

“Nicolle!” I shouted.

Everything stopped. And then Nicolle leaped at me, totally vamped out. I raised the gun and fired. Mid-center body mass. She didn’t die but she did scream, that awful ululation of a vamp dying, or thinking they are. She dropped to the ground, landing in a three point balance, a tripod, both feet and one hand. When she thrust herself up, I stabbed low, into her belly, hitting her descending aorta, or whatever passed as such for vamps. She fell. Lay there, paralyzed, leaking onto the wood floors. If our house was ever a crime scene, the cops would think the place had been the home base of a couple dozen mass murderers.

Ed and Eli fell back, exhausted. Ed pushed off his perch almost instantly and went to Eli. “Let me heal you.”

My second set his weapons on the kitchen table for cleaning and pulled off his T-shirt. His dark chest was scored with talon marks and too much blood. Ed sliced his fingers with his blade and went to work healing the bleeding mess. Neither man looked at me.

“Somebody want to tell me what’s happening?” I asked.

Edmund huffed softly through his nose. I was pretty sure he was breathing to make up for the battle and his own blood loss. “She came in through the back. Over the brick wall. From Katie’s.” Fear slammed through me. I turned that way and Ed said, “Dion called. Everyone is fine. He locked the girls in the kitchen and threw holy water on Nicolle.”

I toed her over and spotted a scald on her shoulder and neck. Nicolle glared at me. It was all she could do with the ash wood in her belly. That and leak.

“And she wanted . . .”

“To kill you,” Eli said. “Natch.”

Natch was my word and I shook my head at him.

“She was dropped off at Katie’s by a dark SUV,” Alex said. “Plates reported stolen an hour ago.”

I shifted my body forward to see him and Bodat coming out of the laundry room where they had taken shelter. The Kid was armed with a handgun. Bodat was carrying a broom and was more pasty than usual. He also stank of fear.

“No way to track her back to the enemy,” Alex said.

“Is there always this much blood?” Bodat asked, his voice shaky.

“This is nothing,” Alex said, his voice light but his eyes hard, maybe remembering his own near-death.

“Alex, please call for the Council House’s cleanup crew.” Ed bent and lifted Nicolle into his arms, which must have shifted the position of the stake in her belly because she swiveled her head to me in one of those not-human moves that’s a lot more like a lizard or a bird than a mammal.

“George is mine,” she whispered, the smell of the lie on her breath, leaking from her with her blood and the scent of lemons. “We love each other. We have been lovers for weeks.” When I didn’t react she shouted, “He’s mine!”

“She’s been turned by Des Citrons,” I said. “We need to know where they are. How many they are. What their plans are.”

Edmund hesitated as if weighing my unspoken command to drink her down. “I will discover all that she knows, my mistress, assuming that she knows anything at all.” That sounded as if he agreed with my unspoken request, so that was good. “Rosanne Romanello has decided not to participate in the Sangre Duello. Therefore, I will have Nicolle shipped to Sedona at sunset.”

Nicolle screamed, “Nooooo!”

Ed carried her deeper into the living room, where he opened the hidden door into his sun-protected hidey-hole and slipped inside. The shelving unit closed behind him, cutting off her scream.

“Eli?” I asked.

“I’m good. Coulda used a few more minutes with the fanged healer, but it’s after sunrise.” He looked out the window at the drenching rain before he started up the stairs. I followed, taking in his back. In the human world he would have needed stitches. Maybe a lot of stitches. In the ranger world and the world of vamps, not so much. “What?” he said to me, as if he could tell I was staring at his wounds.

“Ed missed some. You need an urgent care center.”

“Whyn’t you just put pressure on it all and tape me up. Ed can heal me tonight. It’ll be more expedient than a trip to urgent care.”

Expedient was Eli’s word, used whenever I wanted him to get medical care. Home remedies were more expedient than drugs. Pressure and butterfly bandages were more expedient than stitches. “Dumb man,” I said.

Eli shrugged, which made him bleed faster, and led the way to his bathroom.



* * *



? ? ?

I pulled the covers over my head, hearing rain scudding against the windows. Not thinking. Not feeling. But I rolled back and lifted the boxing gloves off the bedpost, snuggling with them under the covers. Breathing deeply of Onorio scent. Wishing I could tell Bruiser about the sweat house and the revelations of my past. Wishing he was here with me, holding me.

Dreams dragged me under.



* * *



? ? ?

Bruiser texted me after one p.m. with the words, Lunch? My place? Not cooking but got goodies. Will send a car. Subtext: he’ll send a car instead of worrying that I’d walk and confront a killer again. The shooter (if there had been one aiming for him, or me, or both of us, the last time I took a walk) was still missing. The lemon-smelling one. Right.

I texted back, Send car in 15. I’d had nowhere near enough sleep, but the five-plus hours would have to do. Besides, I needed to tell him about Nicolle’s attack and see what Alex had on Clan Des Citrons. I hung the boxing gloves back on the bedpost and crawled out of bed.

I threw on jeans and boots and a leather jacket. It was almost cool enough in NOLA for my traditional winter wear. I kept weapons to a minimum—a couple of stakes, a short-bladed silver-plated knife in my boot, and a single-holster shoulder harness with an old but trusty H&K. Left my hair down. I was ready ten minutes before the car was due and so I woke up Alex, who was asleep on the couch. “Update.”

Alex made a noise that could have come from a seventy-year-old woman as he sat up and woke his electronics. “I got more vid of the car that picked up Dominique at HQ. One was a security cam shot of the car.”

I felt something settle heavily in my midsection, right above my vaunted gut.