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The hour before dawn found me, still in his arms, us stretched out on the gold velvet chaise, side by side, my head on his shoulder, looking into his face. He was asleep. Leo Pellissier had fallen asleep, with me in his arms. Fully weaponed. Able to kill him easily for his abuse of me, had I still wished it. Did I still want him true-dead? Did I blame the predator for death, for blood taken? I wasn’t sure anymore. When I was at my most fragile, he hadn’t abused my weakness. He hadn’t tried to drink or seduce. He had just held me while I grieved the loss of a love I never really had. I was so . . . confused. Torn. Ripped into shreds that lifted in any stray breeze. I hated him. But as a predator, I understood him. And I hated that about myself.
I studied this vampire, wondering how this creature of the night could hurt me, and then . . . try to make it right, somehow. I didn’t understand fangheads—I never would—but especially I would never understand this vamp. His face was soft in sleep, human looking, though not breathing, and pale as death. His cummerbund, tie, and jacket were gone. His white shirt was open at the neck, the sleeves rolled up. His shoes were gone, his feet encased in thin black socks. Long black lashes lay against his cheeks. His black hair was loose from its queue. He looked so like Rick in coloring, but more slender. More powerful. And much more dead. His body was cold against mine, the temperature of the room.
I slipped from his arms and found my shoes. I didn’t bother to put them on but picked them up and walked for the door. “Jane?”
I looked back at Leo. “What is the blood diamond?” he asked softly. I didn’t blink, didn’t react, didn’t answer. He finally said, “Jack Shoffru came to retrieve it, believing it was here, in my possession or in the hands of Molly Everhart Trueblood. From sharing blood with Adrianna he then came to believe that you might have it. Tonight, he came to the determination that she was most likely correct. Do you have it?” I was caught in his eyes and knew that he was reading my faintest reactions. “He believes that the diamond is a terrible weapon when used against my kind.” I didn’t try to hide the truth in my eyes. “Ahhh,” he breathed, sadness lacing the word like fine brandy. “Vengeance served cold. Do you still desire to take my head?”
Again I didn’t answer. Leo’s face didn’t change, but I heard the distant threat when he said, “Will you use this weapon against me or mine?”
I thought how to phrase it in the words that an old, old, old vampire might understand. “No. I will not use the blood diamond against you or yours, so long as you and yours do no harm to me and to those I claim. I promise on . . . on the blood of my father. On the blood of the first man I ever killed.”
Leo, the Master of the City of New Orleans, nodded once. “Jack Shoffru will not keep his word. He will be forsworn. He will attack me or those I claim, those I protect. Soon. You have my leave to defend.” He closed his eyes again in sleep.
Well. Wasn’t that just ducky?
I made my way down to the locker room, stripped, and changed into jeans and the new boots, pulling on a warm fleece shirt that was in my locker, but that I’d never seen before. In the mirror, my face was chapped and raw, my eyes red-rimmed, my nose red and swollen. My hair had come down, braids like long snakes around my shoulders, stakes hanging loose in the braids. I didn’t care. I pulled the stakes and stuck them in a pocket. I strapped my weapons on and left the dress and throat protectors—the gorgets—on the bench in the middle of the locker room, along with the other clothes and shoes.
I had new information freely given to me by Leo. Jack Shoffru had an interest in the blood diamond. Which he knew about from his time with the Damours. I just didn’t know how it all went together. I needed to think.
I walked out of the council headquarters into the dark gray of dawn. The world smelled fresh, of the flowers blooming in Leo’s garden, of spring, of man and his modern-day foods—coffee, strong on the air from the kitchen at my back, a kitchen that had to feed all the blood-servants who fed the vamps.