Molly choked back a sob. "It's not much time. Not much time at all."
"Plenty of time. I'll have them back before the full moon." I gripped my cell so hard the plastic gave. "I promise, Mol. I promise on all that I hold holy."
She sniffed. "That austere and ungiving God you worship?"
I touched the necklace I wore as if it were an amulet or icon--or a cross--the nugget warm from my skin. "Yeah. Him. I swear it. You should have gone home, Molly. You should have gone when I told you to. I'm so sorry I didn't make you leave."
"Angie said if we left, a bad man would take us on the road."
My throat closed up tight. What did it mean, take us on the road?
"I think it was a vision, Big Cat. And because of it I didn't leave town." Molly sobbed, her voice sounding broken and torn. "If you had made us leave, I'd have holed up in a hotel. And it would have been a lot worse without you close by. I'd have . . ." She took a breath, and I heard the sob in it. "I'd have died."
"Crap," I whispered.
"Yeah. Understatement of the year. And hey, you need to know. Those feelers you asked me to put out to the local covens about them helping with vamps? Not so much as a nibble. No one's talking. I tried. I really tried." And Molly was crying again, though her tears were for her missing babies, not my missing info.
When Molly had stopped crying and fallen asleep, I hung up and dialed Troll, to tell him about the damage to the house. And that I was closer to finding the maker of the young rogues and Bliss. Not exactly a lie, but not really the truth either. Not yet. But soon. I had promised. I'd given my word to Mol. I intended to keep it.
I inspected my map with the sites of young-rogue vamp attacks pinned on it, remembering the lightning strike in New Orleans City Park where I had witnessed the young-rogue rising. I pulled a scrap of paper to me and began listing what I knew and guessed. I was chasing Rousseaus, one a master-vamp who was violating the Vampira Carta and--by the closely related scent signatures--possibly his siblings. They were Rousseaus who never spent time at the clan home, which meant they could be anywhere in the city. I couldn't simply bust through the Rousseau clan-home door and stake them. If I attacked before I knew exactly what was going on, I'd give them the opportunity to flee, or worse, put their plans in motion immediately. I was looking for vamps using witch magic and witch children's blood, maybe doing something to avoid the devoveo. I didn't have a clear picture of it yet, but it was here. It was right here in front of me. Whatever the heck it was.
I stuffed my supplies in Bitsa's saddlebags and tore off on the Harley, moist, heated air touching me through the unzipped mesh pockets, otherwise deflected by the new leathers I sweated in. I needed to see what had happened to the newest grave site in Couturie Forest in the New Orleans City Park.
It took time to build the sites where humans were killed, buried, magic was done, and young rogues were raised. Time and magic and privacy. And so far as I knew, there were only three places where that had been done, and only two were still in use. I had to bet that the young-rogue maker would go back to one of them rather than start new elsewhere. I bent over Bitsa and urged her to more speed.
The park was closed this late, but I parked Bitsa a block out and jogged in, searching, following my nose along the paths. The ground wasn't rain saturated now, but had absorbed the moisture dropped by Ada, and the detritus of hurricane winds had been cleaned up. The smell of damaged trees and rain-beaten plants was still strong, but without the waterlogged, slightly salty reek from before. I left the path and quickly found the ten-foot-diameter circle. I remembered that a cleanup crew had been sent to dispose of the body, and they had obviously been here too. The crosses had been ripped from the trees and the pentagram of shells had been scattered. I could smell the humans who had cleaned the place up, two men and a woman, sweating in the heat of day, sunscreen and deodorant and soap and shampoo scents still on the air. And above the odors of the crew, the more recent scent of a solitary vampire. One who had stolen the children and Bliss. He had stood here, within the last two nights, right where I was standing, studying the scene. And he'd been angry.
I could taste his fury, building, hot and feral, but controlled for all that. Had he come to raise the young rogue? I remembered the smell of Hurricane Ada's lightning when I first came here, my curiosity what a lightning strike in the middle of a major working would cause. He'd walked off, angry and alone. His rogue had risen without him. Had risen early. . . .