She tilted her head, one of those miniscule, wrong-angled-move gestures vamps can do, and I figured I was out of the woods as to protocol. She indicated with a wave of her hand that I should sit, and weirdly, her fingers trembled, just a hint. Vamps didn’t tremble either. Ming took the wingback chair beside mine and folded her hands in her lap. The human stood beside her, watching my every move. Ming said, “The master of New Orleans is kind to send assistance in this, our time of need.”
“Yes, ma’am. Blood-Master Pellissier is eager to assist all those loyal to him.” As I said. Smoke up her backside, though my words were still true. Leo was a good master, as far as a bloodsucking-ruler-over-all-he-surveyed type of loyalty went. “How can the Enforcer assist the Glass blood-master and her Mithrans?”
The human in the black suit reached into his jacket at chest level, and I tensed. He stopped the action instantly and then continued, much more slowly. This was Ming’s primo, Asian, slender, and deadly. Very, very deadly in a martial arts kinda way. As if he could break me into tiny little pieces with his fingertips, a hard look, and a toothpick, before I could blink. “A Mithran has gone missing,” he said. “She was last seen with this person.” The man—Cai, no last name, or maybe no first name, I wasn’t sure—pulled out two sheaves of papers, not a weapon, and placed them on the small table between Ming and me.
I lifted one batch of pages and saw the photo of an old man, maybe in his seventies, with sun-lined skin, sunspots, raised and rough age spots, kinda brown and freckled all over. Faded blue eyes. He was mostly bald. A narrow-eyed, mean-looking man, the kind who was raised on whuppin’s, hardtack, and moonshine, and who hated the world. I flipped through the three attached pages. The info said his name was Colonel Ernest Jackson, but there was no mention of military service in the scant record.
The second file showed a digital photo of the vamp in question, Heyda Cohen. She was tiny and very beautiful. Vamps offered people the change for lots of reasons, and personal beauty was high on the list. But Heyda’s intelligent, piercing eyes suggested that she was special in the other ways as well.
“Heyda was in charge of my personal security and she was contacted by that human man”—Ming pointed at his photo—“a communication that carried a threat to me. She tracked him.” Ming’s speech, accented by her native Asian language, sped up and her syntax grew more fractured. “Then she met with that human and three of his followers. In a park. In the city. Then she went away with him. Without contacting us or alerting her support team, who were waiting in the park, watching. They allowed her to leave, as she did not appear distressed. We do not know why she left with him. She did not come home afterwards.” Suddenly Ming was all but wringing her hands, leaning toward me in her chair, shoulders tense. “The man refuses to see us. Refuses to allow us to see her. He hides in his compound and . . .” She glanced up at her primo, and her face crumpled. Her shoulders went up high, and Cai placed a hand on one in tender concern.
I had to wonder why this had been reported as a minor problem, and not the urgent one that a kidnapping represented. Especially the kidnapping of a head of clan security. When I asked that question, Cai said, “Heyda gave us no signal that she was in danger. She often worked with the human community to forge ties. We assumed that was what she was doing. But she didn’t return. She didn’t contact us. That is not like her.”
“In this day and age,” Ming said, “one with cameras and detection devices, there are many places we dare not enter. We are not allowed to protect our own.” Ming’s eyes bled slowly black, her sclera going scarlet, but her fangs remained up in her mouth on their little bone hinges. It was a demonstration of intent and control. “Heyda must be returned to us. Or avenged. If they have made her true-dead, I will drink them all down. Humans go too far in this modern time.”
Aw righty, then. “Did Heyda’s team video the meet? Do you have an idea where she might have been taken?”
“Yes,” Cai said. “We have gathered all video and intelligence related to this situation. The compound’s security is tight, using cameras, guards, and patrolling dogs. And we smell silver in their weapons. We could raid the compound, but my people smell explosives in addition to the other weapons and measures. My master is disturbed.”
I focused on the word making the most impact. “Compound?”
“That human male has land,” Ming said. “It has been in his family for longer than I have been blood-master. He calls his holdings a church, but it is not. It is something else.”
I looked my question at the primo. Cai was standing with his hands loose at his sides, and he shrugged slightly. “They claim the right of religious freedom, but their women are not free to choose.”
“Ah. A cult,” I said, cold starting to seep into my bones as I began putting this together. It had FUBAR written all over it.