The men quick-stepped toward the stairwell but positioned themselves outside. One man threw something. I closed my eyes and covered my ears just in time. The explosion shattered through my hands, against my eardrums. The flash-bang took out the humans descending the stairs. I had no idea what effect it might have on a vamp except to make him mad.
Derek and his boys raced into the confined space and brought down three forms. The humans were on the floor, incapacitated by the noise, but the vamp was fine, if by fine that meant really vampy and ticked. But he wasn't fighting, which was odd. Derek's men shackled them all, the humans in steel, the vamp in silver. I stepped into the stairwell.
The vamp hadn't fought because he had been snared with a silver mesh net formed of tiny interlocking crosses; his face and hands were burned and blistered. Derek had thrown the net, bringing down the vamp with no fight at all. I fingered the glowing mesh. "Now, this is cool. I got to get me one of these."
"I'll send you to my supplier later," Derek said. "Silent alarm went out three minutes ago. We probably got another three minutes before the cavalry shows up. Either make him true-dead or talk fast. The silver mesh will make him uncomfortable enough to maybe chat a bit."
"Good." I toed the vamp. He wasn't pretty, a recent, partially healed scar marking the left side of his face diagonally from outer brow, alongside his nose, across both lips, to the right side of his chin. He looked tough, a warrior, given vampire life for some great sacrifice, maybe. It didn't happen often, but it did happen. And I had seen him at the vamp party at the Old Nunnery. "Where are the witches?"
He spat at me. Before the spit fell, Derek landed a kick in the vamp's side. He oofed with pain. I knelt beside him so he could smell my scent. And I pulled a vamp-killer, my favorite knife, eighteen-inch blade with a hand-carved, elk-horn handle, a gift from Molly's husband. His eyes widened and he met mine, pulling a vamp glamour. "Release me." The words reverberated through me, aching with need. Beast put a paw on my mind, and pressed down, giving me control I lacked on my own. I took a breath, feeling the sticky command dissolve. He tried again. "Release me and I will give you all that you desire." English wasn't his first language, his accent vaguely Italian.
Derek shook his head. "We're Leo's. We got protection from vamp mind control."
"Tell you what, bubba," I said, "you tell me where the Damours are, and maybe I'll let you live."
His eyes bled back to half-human, the whites less bloody, the pupils less black and wide. I was pretty sure his irises would be brown when he wasn't vamped out. "You do not fall to me?"
"She's the Rogue Hunter," Derek said. "She don't fall to nobody." He was staring at the far wall, gun at the ready, not letting his eyes meet the vamp's, a weird look on his face.
"I have heard of this one. You follow her? A woman? She is not even human."
"She's more human than you. Now answer the nice lady or she'll blind you. I know you can heal from it, but it'll be painful. And time-consuming."
More human than you? Nice lady? And he didn't react when the vamp told him I wasn't human. . . . Great. Can't a girl keep a secret or two?
"What are you? You do not smell of witch, like my mistress and masters."
I was right. Renee, her brother/hubby, and currently unnamed other brother were witches/vamps, no longer members of the long-chained, and no one knew how long the adults had been sane. They were witches who practiced dark magic, yet who had survived the purge. And they were killing witch children in spells. More and more, it all made sense.
I pivoted on a heel and went back to the long-chained ones. I sniffed, mouth open, along the bodies of the Damours' three-hundred-year-old teenagers. They fought and growled, tearing at their shackles as I did so, fought to get to me, to the blood in my veins. I caught a whiff, buried under the scent of vamp. Both children carried the witch gene.
CHAPTER 20
Thief-of-kits. Die.
Ignoring the men and vamp on the stairway landing, I raced up the stairs and into the apartment. I disabled a man with a knife, a chef by the smell of his clothes, bonked him on the head with the pommel of my vamp-killer, and left him unconscious at the entry. The apartment was opulent in red and white, lots of white marble, white-painted wood, lots of red fabric. The color of blood seemed to appeal to vamps as a decorating scheme. Go figure. I breathed the place in, scenting. It reeked of human blood donors, multiple vamps, pain, and sex. I raced from room to room, some with beds, some without, one with a complicated rack hanging from the ceiling, chains and tools of a bloody trade organized on shelves. There was a drain here too. There was no indication in the apartment's scents that the kits or Bliss had ever been here. I abandoned it for the third floor.