Dark Queen (Jane Yellowrock #12)

“Meanwhile, Lawrence is recuperating.” When I got an eyelid to open and looked blank, he said, “Lawrence Hefner. Leo’s valet? Injured in the were attack, trying to save Leo?”

I nodded, closing my eyes. Lack of sleep was catching up to me. “He hates being called Larry.”

“He has protested being in bed with Gee DiMercy, most vociferously. Leo found it necessary to promise to skin Gee alive if he so much as tried anything of a sexual nature with Lawrence.”

Gee would still try something. Something innocuous. Just to give Larry a hard time. I smiled and stretched to give Bruiser access to the tendon on the outside of my other foot.

“Leo told me about the potential three islands for the duel,” I said, “but what happens if the negotiations with Titus end up with us all in international waters, on a boat, instead of on land? Wouldn’t that leave NOLA open for a coup d’état?”

“Not if Edmund is left onshore.”

My breathing almost stopped at that. Edmund. Leo’s heir. One of the top vamp fighters in the United States. “That’s why Leo made Edmund his official heir. To protect New Orleans,” I said.

“And you the Dark Queen,” Bruiser said quietly, his fingers stopping, to simply hold my feet. “Between the two of you, with your ability to timewalk, you could protect the city and her people.”

“He’s planning to leave me ashore if an island isn’t chosen. Son of a gun. I didn’t know,” I said, just as softly, touching my belly and the faint pain there. Indigestion maybe. “I didn’t understand that move on the chessboard. Making me DQ wasn’t because he’s selfish. It was because he’s . . .” I stopped. No way was I going to say Leo Pellissier was a good man. “A good king.”

“Yes. He is.” There was something soft and sad in his tone, as if he wished Leo had been a better man too.

“But if Titus knows all this about Ed and me, that we could hold the city, then . . .” I opened both eyes and said, “Then what?”

“Then he won’t push to have the fight in the water, but on land, land that Leo owns or at least has some appearance of owning. Titus will want to kill you, Edmund, and Leo at the Duello.”

I closed my eyes again, letting the ramifications run through me.

Long pleasurable minutes later, Bruiser said, “Leo has scrapped your idea of having all his people go naked at the opening ceremonies of the Sangre Duello to shock and dismay the EVs.”

“Thank God.” I grinned evilly. “Too cold?”

“Precisely. Though he did profess sadness at not being able to see you naked in your half-fighting form.”

I opened one eye again and glared. “This is the stink-eye. Keep it up and I’ll give you the stink-eye with both eyes.”

“I consider myself warned.” His brown eyes melted me inside. Along with his very, so very talented hands. “The lab has sent a preliminary report of the contents and DNA from the bottle of mixed blood found in the Caruso Family Funeral Services. They have detected the blood of five major players and perhaps a dozen lesser players, all very old and powerful Mithrans, mixed with traces of chemicals, a long list of them. And unlike the usual putrefaction and decomposition of Mithran blood, these chemicals keep it stable for a long period. Months. Perhaps years.”

I opened my other eye, so I could see him with both, this time in concern. “Is it drinkable? Can humans or vamps drink it to be turned?”

“No. But it stops necrosis of flesh, is bactericidal, and speeds healing dramatically.”

“The U.S. military PTBs would give their accumulated right testicles for that formula. Eli told me so.”

The laughter in Bruiser’s eyes went deeper, as if he was envisioning a pile of right private parts and a long line of pained military brass. He said, “As would any pharmaceutical company, any foreign power, any billionaire who wants to live forever without becoming bound to a vampire.”

I almost said, That sucks, but it would have been funny and funny didn’t fit here.

“They have managed to reverse engineer the formula,” he said. “Leo has personally completed preliminary testing. It works.”

“Mmm. And if Leo can reproduce it in quantity, he will have the single most financially lucrative and medically important pharmaceutical product to hit the health profession since penicillin.”

“Indeed.”

Which would give Leo almost unlimited financial revenues, until the patent ran out or someone else reverse engineered it. Right. And Leo would be in terrible danger from outside and inside forces because such a product and such an economic stranglehold would change every financial market in the world. And Leo would have all that power. I sighed. Leo, king of the world.

“Enough talk.” Bruiser put my feet on the sofa, then stood and picked me up. And carried me to his bed. Enough talk indeed.





CHAPTER 13


    After I Spill Some Blood and Kill Some People





Some hours later, as we lay cuddled in blankets with pillows stuffed around and behind us, I said, “So Leo isn’t going to do the whole naked bit. But isn’t there something else he can do to discombobulate the EuroVamps? Something . . . I don’t know, American, all muscle cars and Grease-style hairdos?”

Bruiser stiffened, rolled over on top of me, and kissed me hard. “You are not only beautiful but you are bloody brilliant. That, my dear girl, is a lovely thought.” On elbows and knees he rolled from the bed, grabbed his clothes, and was gone before I could think twice. To the empty walls, I said, “Onorios can move almost as fast as fangheads.” I narrowed my eyes at the ceiling. “And I don’t have a car. Dang it.”

But . . . Bruiser called me beautiful. Wow.

I pulled the covers close and fell asleep.



* * *



? ? ?

I napped for an hour longer and then rolled out of bed feeling pretty dang wonderful. Good enough to check e-mails, answer texts, and return voice mails. And do some research on Julietta Tempeste, head of Clan Des Citrons. There wasn’t much except that Julietta and her predecessors as clan Blood Master had loved lemons—lemon tea, lemon preserves, and drinking from humans who had eaten large amounts of lemons.

I had a blitzkrieg moment. Were lemons grown in Louisiana? And if so, where?

I did an online search and discovered that there were three nurseries and two lemon groves within driving distance of NOLA. One of them had a large B&B, called Lemon Grove Farm and B&B. I dressed, making calls and getting Alex to research each of the places, with an emphasis on the bed-and-breakfast.

By the time I got home, Alex had broken through the security system on the B&B and found evidence that vamps had taken over the place. In stored footage from motion detectors, we saw two unmoving bodies on the floor in the kitchen. People were walking past the living room security camera in total unconcern. There was one very clear image of Dominique. Another that looked like Cym. And we had a name on the owners. The Stephenses, family of five and a dog.

“When were these acquired by the surveil?” I asked.

Alex, his head bent over his screens, said, “Last one was last night, nine twenty-seven p.m. Then, it looks like they dismantled the system. All cameras are currently offline. I have images of people—most of them human, not vamps—beating the cameras with household tools. A broom. A tire iron. Other stuff. They got every single camera. But they forgot to wipe the memory.”

I made more calls and got a team together. Within an hour, an armed party of Derek’s best and I were on the way south and east in a caravan of armored vans. Eli and I took up the entire bench seat behind the driver, our gear in gobags on the floor at our feet, comms units hooked up and tied into the main system at the house, where Alex monitored progress at the B&B and rallied PsyLED to meet us there.

Over my cell, which was hooked into our comms system, he said to Ayatas, “I don’t give a flaming pink flamingo if you’re busy. My sister and brother are on the way there with an armed team to do your job.”