Dark Queen (Jane Yellowrock #12)

In the next match, which was supposed to end with first blood, Titus’s swordswoman cheated at en garde and Gee took a hidden steel blade into his belly and out his back, followed by a Z-shaped move that carved his innards into Zorro-inspired spaghetti. Anzus were lethally allergic to steel and couldn’t heal themselves on Earth. Gee didn’t die, but only because his organs were not human-sited, but Anzu-sited. And because Leo fed him from his own wrist. My Enforcer was out for the night. Likely for the rest of the Sangre Duello. The cheater won. Cheating was smiled upon in the Sangre Duello.

Edmund took the ring, facing off with two blades to first blood, against a vamp who called himself Jeedalayn, which was supposed to be Somali for the verb “to whip.” Jeedalayn had little to no dossier beyond his presumed age. My primo stood there in blue armor facing a six-hundred-year-old vamp. Something in Jeedalayn’s stance caused my heart to flutter. It may have stopped. I had a very, very bad feeling. The bell sounded, the tone a clear pure note of death.

Jeedalayn slithered. Swords so fast they sang on the air.

In half a second, Ed took two cuts. Blood flew. His opponent stepped back, honoring first blood. But my primo’s left hand was nearly severed at the wrist, bloody, splintered, and cut bone exposed, his hand hanging by tendons. His right thumb was equally nearly amputated.

Bile boiled into my throat at the sight. Someone again held me back as Leo’s clan members rushed to provide assistance and clean up the blood spatter. Two blood-servants bundled my primo into sheets and carried him down the stairs. I followed, the scent/taste of his blood and pain heavy on the air. My feet felt strange on the stairs, as if they didn’t quite touch down. As if I might slide off and into another dimension. And I still held the Glob. It was so cold, it was like clutching an ice cube.

Behind me I heard Brandon say, “Results of this duel are acceptable to the Onorios.”

I managed to not whirl back and coldcock him.

In Edmund’s shared cubicle in the center rooms, the vamps and humans placed my primo on a bed. My primo. Someone I should have protected. A woman said, “I have him. Del, get the bottle.”

“Right here, Mama. I’m ready.”

A half-familiar smell hit the air: blood and chemicals. I blinked, to focus on Dacy Mooney, kneeling on the mattress beside Edmund, his right hand in her left. The heir of Clan Shaddock said, “Ed, honey, we’re gonna coat your thumb with the blood remedy. This will hurt.”

“They say it feels as if one is being immolated.”

“I wouldn’t know. You can tell me.”

Dacy upended a small glass vial over Ed’s severed thumb and a thick, syrupy drop formed on the end of its rubber spout.

I recognized the scent of the blood remedy. Leo’s Texas biomedical lab indeed had reverse engineered the revenant potion left by the vamp funeral director when the Caruso blood-family skipped town, to back the EVs. But instead of creating it to make revenants, Leo had made his version for healing. The MOC was a dangerous creature, but sometimes he was also a pretty cool dude.

I still wondered at the oddity of the Carusos leaving their bottle, and at the letter Leo had received claiming they had betrayed him only to save Laurie Caruso’s daughter. It could be insurance, a bid for protection should Titus lose. Carusos playing the long game, maybe.

Dacy dribbled the drop on Ed’s severed thumb and pressed the thumb back in place. Ed screamed. He continued screaming as Dacy and six other vamps held him down so Del could apply the blood mixture to the ends of his amputated hand. Del’s blond head bent over my primo, her fighting leathers the color of her eyes. Ed screamed, his ululation so high-pitched that I went deaf and had to step from the room. Yeah. That was the reason. Not my own cowardice at seeing a man I cared for injured and in agony for trying to protect me.

Shiloh walked down the stairs toward me, followed by a line of men and women. “Leo wants you to follow this one,” she said, her long straight red hair swinging. Except for hers, I had never seen straight red hair. Red hair was always curly. Stupid thoughts. Stupid duel. I hated this. These mind games and blood and death.

“Why do I need to follow you?” I asked, my lips feeling numb. Edmund was being tortured. I could hear his screams through the soundproofed door. I placed a hand on the door, as if I could ease his pain through the steel.

“Your two best fighters are down and out,” Shiloh said. “Koun is slated to fight seconds after this bout, so he can’t fight this one.”

“She’s trying to tell you that I accepted my own duel,” Eli said. He descended the last four steps and stopped beside me.

The acid in my stomach boiled. “Why?” I whispered.

Shiloh said, “Challenger is Lucrezia Borgia. Eli Younger chose weapons.”

“I picked matching German Sig Sauer P320s,” Eli said.

“Naturellement, I contested such barbarism,” the female vamp behind him said. “However, the priestess has denied my disputation.”

I recognized the woman. Hers was one of the histories I’d studied in preparation for the EVs’ visit, a VIV, very important vamp. She shouldn’t have been on the roster until later tonight at the worst. Tomorrow at best. And Gee or Ed should have been fighting her. Not Eli. I followed Shiloh down the stairs, not sure why we were going down and not up. My brain was wrapped in cotton. Ed was screaming. I could still hear him.

Shiloh said, “Lucrezia Borgia chose death.”

My boots halted on the stairs. I came to a stop, my mind flashing with useless information. Lucrezia was the illegitimate child of a pope and his mistress, in the early 1500s, and had become an assassin for Titus. She was a master at hundreds of weapons. Her dossier said that she practiced all night every night, with blades and firearms. I was so cold at the thought that my head started buzzing and nausea boiled in my gut. The P320 was a brand-new modular weapon, a serialized gun. It could be modified to shoot nine-millimeter loads, altered quickly to fire .357 Sig, .40 S&W, or even .45 ACP—automatic Colt pistol.

No matter how good vamps were, there were always weapons old vamps hadn’t fired, because they figured the ones they were most familiar with were the best. This was sometimes true, sometimes not. There was a chance, a small chance, Lucrezia had never fired this modular and wouldn’t have the muscle memory to make her a perfect shot. I started my feet moving again, down. Down to the death rings.

Eli was standing on the front porch, moonlight brightening the world around him, making his black leathers seem darker, as if he himself were a pathway into the underworld. I set my eyes on him, but he didn’t look back, though he surely had to feel the weight of my gaze. He led the way down the steps.

We were halfway down to the beach when Shiloh said to me, “The duel is at forty paces, twenty each, approximately one hundred feet, depending on stride. Since it’s with firearms, it’s all very methodical and according to protocol covered in codicils other than the Sangre Duello.”

I walked away from Shiloh, across the sand, following Eli. He was breathing slowly. The pulse in his neck was equally slow. Zen. Warrior face on. But he smelled—strangely—of excitement and joy. On the beach, the gulf’s waves curled on the sand. Lightning split and danced in the distant sky, a storm so far away it looked as if the clouds and water were one. With Beast-sight I studied the building cloud. Not magic lightning. Just one of the ubiquitous storms on gulf water. Thunder rolled in with the waves, long and low. The tide was high, making the beach a narrow strip. The wind was cold, and I shivered as it needled its way through my clothes.

Eli bent to his second. That second couldn’t be me, so Tex had accepted that position, and they spoke in voices I might have heard had I tried. Brute trotted across the sand to me and stuck his nose into my crotch.

I batted him away. “Stop that.”

He chuffed with laughter and sat close beside me. A moment later he leaned his entire body against me, from calf to hip, in what was clearly an attempt to comfort me. I could feel his panting breaths and his body heat through the leather uniform and I realized how cold I was. Probably shocky. Because I couldn’t help my people. And Eli was facing a warrior who had been fighting and shooting for centuries.

I scratched Brute’s head between his ears. “Dang werewolf.”