When I'd marked my map with the location of all the reported young-rogue vamp attacks on humans, there had been three clusters, and one had been in the two miles around the vamp cemetery. I needed to look around a bit.
The call ended. A man of few words, our Bruiser. But a man of really good kisses, especially the kind delivered on the floor of a limo. Uncomfortable prickly warmth spread through me. I was interested in a blood-servant. Interested as in interested. And Bruiser seemed pretty interested in me. He could have turned off the security system at the cemetery from Leo's house. Was he just using the alarm system as an excuse to see me? The scratchy warmth spread, barbed and maddening. Yeah. I was interested.
Yet I had a date Saturday with another man entirely. A breathtakingly gorgeous human man, who would be a far better choice for romantic entanglements than the blood-servant of the master of the city. I'd once figured Rick for a player, but that was back when he'd been undercover. I didn't really know him at all.
Thinking about men was frustrating and tied up my mind in barbed wire. Not something I had time for right now. I switched mental gears to more pressing matters, like the feel of Bitsa between my thighs, the heated wind beating against me, and the ripe smells of the city.
I could have searched the vamp cemetery alone once Bruiser had disabled the alarms, but he was a careful man, less trusting than Rick when it came to keys and security precautions. Once inside the barred gate, he entered the first mausoleum we came to. When he left the crypt, he nodded at me once. I figured that meant I could do whatever I wanted, but he didn't leave. He leaned against the hood of his car, watching me from behind mirrored sunglasses. He looked patient. Which made me nervous. If he'd been impatient, I could have been annoyed and recalcitrant and deliberately taken my time. It was harder with a calm and peaceful man.
I removed my helmet and tossed my denim jacket to the seat. From the saddlebags, I pulled a pad and pen and began sketching the layout of the cemetery. It didn't have to be exact or to scale, but I wanted a map to trigger my memories later if I needed. I drew in the eight mausoleums, labeling them with clan names and descriptions, including the naked angel statues on top of each. The last time I'd been here, several of the mausoleums had been damaged. Now there was evidence of repair work: tire tracks crushing the grass, a ladder lying flat, a device that looked like a portable cement mixer but likely was something else, and a few cigarette butts littering the ground. Bruiser picked them up as I worked, looking disgruntled. I watched him from the corner of my eye as I sketched in the chapel from which the priestess had emerged the time I'd been here in owl form. Today the place looked deserted.
When I returned the pad to the saddlebags, Bruiser wandered over. He looked pale, as if he'd been badly fed upon and not restored enough by sips of his master's blood. Last time I saw him he'd been facing a feeding frenzy. "You look a little pale. Okay, a lot pale," I offered diffidently. "You okay?"
"I've been better. Tell me again why you have to be here?"
I explained about the clusters of young-rogue vamp attacks. "Like the rogues had risen close by, and attacked the first humans who happened to be in their path."
He looked interested. "Where else have they risen?"
I briefly detailed the map, then told him more about the rogue I'd taken down the other night. "I'd never seen a rising before, and there was something really strange about it, something I don't think is part of a normal rising. The site had a pentagram and a casting circle shaped in shells on the ground. There were crosses nailed to the trees at the points of the pentagram."
I glanced at him, catching a look of utter disbelief on his face. "What?"
He shook his head. "Not possible. The crew sent to clean up the grave site in the park would have reported on that."
Now, that was interesting. There were crosses when I'd been there. Someone had gotten to the city park pretty quickly after the rising to get them down between my visit and the visit by the sanitation crew. Or . . . maybe the lightning strike I'd smelled when I first got there had changed the timing of the rising? Was that even possible? Frankenstein had risen after his maker had channeled a lightning strike into his body--early cinematic defibrillator. I grinned and Bruiser raised his brows. I shook my head to show that my thoughts weren't important.
He went on. "Any young rogue who woke in the presence of crosses would be driven back into the grave, screaming in pain."
"Maybe the pentagram and the magics performed in the soil prevented it?" Bruiser stared off in the distance, face closed, thinking thoughts he had no desire to share with me. When he didn't reply, I insisted, "But why the crosses? Okay, I get that vamps live and breathe religion, which is pretty weird for the undead, who don't need to breathe."