Cell phones were pulled and numbers punched in. Everywhere, bodies turned for privacy, leaving Bruiser and me alone in a sea of people. Down the street, a Porsche the maroon red of old blood pulled slowly down the narrow lane of open street, headlights picking out the servants, security, and drivers, their bodies showing tense in the sharp shadows, heads swiveling, staring into the dark as if watching for attack. Most had obviously seen something like this before, vamps on the edge of violence.
There was nothing in the lore about a feeding frenzy, but sharks were well known for it. I knew from personal experience that big cats could go into killing mode and destroy anything they could catch. Vamps were predators of a particularly intelligent and gruesome variety. I started shivering, feeling cold, even in the humid heat.
Across the way, I saw a shimmer of magic, hazy blue and gray sparkles. Five indistinct forms stood in the shadows of a four-story warehouse that had been turned into condos, light spilling around them from a myriad of windows. Five witches, standing at what might have been the points of a pentagram, a glamour sparkling over them, making them appear middle-aged and dowdy. There was nothing threatening about them, but I wondered why they were there and what they wanted. I guessed they were the five witches Bliss and Tia had seen. I drew in a breath, testing the scents, and caught a whiff of witch. Familiar. It was similar to the witch scent I'd caught on the grave of the young rogue I'd seen rise. Similar, but not quite exact. And then it was gone, carried by the fitful currents following the Mississippi. It felt wrong for them to be here, watching vamps, but so much was amiss right now it was hard to tease out the differing strands of the tangled problems.
The Porsche braked to a stop and the passenger door opened. No light came on inside, leaving the interior like the mouth of a cave. Bruiser leaned in and sat me on the seat in a display of grace and sheer muscle. "Leo says to treat her."
"Yes. She is . . . weak," a soft voice said. "Injured." The accent was vaguely African and touched by French, the vowel sounds mellow and very round.
Fist still at my throat, my blood drying and sticky, wet and fresh, I turned to the driver's seat as the door closed at my side. I got my first look at Bethany. She had been a black woman when human and was now the blackest vampire I had ever seen. Unlike most vamps, whose skin paled after long years without the sun, her flesh was blue-black, her lips even darker. Her sclera were brownish and her irises blacker than any I had ever seen, blacker than the People's, blacker than the darkest night. Her hair was knotted and twisted into dreadlocks and worked with hundreds of gold and stone beads; the locks were pulled to the nape of her neck, hiding her ears except for the lobes, which dangled a multitude of gold rings.
Power surrounded her like an aura, but softer in texture than the spiked, mailed fist of Leo's vamp clout. Bethany's energies were ephemeral, questing, and carried a scent similar to witch power, but more bitter. I didn't know what she had been before she was turned, but she was old, maybe the oldest vamp I had ever seen, and full of a strange power. I thought of Sabina Delgado y Aguilera, the old vamp at the chapel, who wore the white wimple of a nun. This power was like hers, slow and roiling, building and moving as an avalanche builds and moves, but with intent and purpose.
Bethany was staring at me, her gaze so dark it was like the sky on a moonless, clouded night in the Appalachians, so deep it was like staring into an ocean trench, empty and fathomless. A primal reaction sent gooseflesh over my skin. Beast did nothing, hunched deep in my mind, watching, worried, nearly--but not quite--fearful. Without taking her eyes from me, Bethany shifted the Porsche into gear and moved along the street. She looked away from me when she turned, guiding the car right, then left. Three blocks later, we were out of the Warehouse District. My shivers worsened. I was pretty sure I was going into shock. I needed to shift.
She pulled the car into a twenty-four-hour gas station with bars on the windows and blinding security lights and eased around back into a garbage-strewn alley. Deep in the shadows, she cut the motor. "You are injured," she said. "Do you choose to be healed?"
There was something odd about the phrase but I didn't have much choice. I wouldn't make it home and didn't have the energy to shift without the fetishes or boulders. I licked my dry lips and said, "Sure."
She lifted her hands from the steering wheel and reached out, taking the back of my head in one iron-hard palm; her other palm pressed against my forehead. Her hands were icy cold, as if she slept in a refrigerator. With implacable strength, she bent my head back. I forced down my reaction to her touch. I had agreed to this, whatever this was.