On my hands and knees, vamp blood burning my face, I cursed long and hard, spitting my words at the earth. Frustrated tears leaked from my eyes as I swore. I levered my body up, sitting beside LeShawn on the bed of pine needles, one hand on his body, my legs splayed. The endorphins of victory shot through my bloodstream, clashing with the knowledge that I had lost my best link to the witch kidnappings and the maker of the young rogues. For an instant my emotions whirled, more dizzying than liquor, hotter than sex. I had survived. I had lost. "Oh . . . no," I whispered. I gagged with shock, the taste acidic and burning.
I took a breath that smelled and tasted of vamp blood, heavy and rank in the air. The elation dipped and died, crushed beneath the despair. "LeShawn. Crap." Tears pooled in my eyes, making him waver in the dark.
I had to cut off his head. I knew that. It was the only way to give him true-death. If his maker were here, or if I had used the ash stakes, without silver to poison his blood, he might have been brought back. Maybe. And maybe not. I wasn't sure. I hadn't known what I'd been dealing with until too late. Until after I had staked him.
Sitting on the bed of pine needles and leaves, I pulled my cell and hit REDIAL. When Bruiser answered, I could hear the sound of a car in the background, a faint, steady hum. "Never mind. He couldn't hold it together."
"True-dead?"
"Not yet. But I hit him with a silver-tipped stake. Through and through his heart."
Bruiser put it together aloud. "If we try to bring him back, it'll spread the poison through him before he can heal. That's even assuming we could find his master to give him a meal. Bethany is not well tonight. Leo could do it. But he's . . . not himself yet."
I bet he wasn't. I sighed, the sound whistling shrilly in the phone, and spoke mostly to myself. "I'll put the silver stakes away for the rest of this hunt. Not that it does me much good now." I cursed again, but my words held no heat.
"Hold off bringing him true-death until after the priestess has a chance to check him out. If he was sane enough to talk, immediately after his first rising, she may be able to tell why."
I knew that the priestess had once spent the night in the chapel just ahead, but I didn't know for absolute certainty she was there tonight. I hadn't peeked in the windows. And Bruiser didn't know that I knew about her lair, if that was what the chapel was.
And now the lying and half-truths start. But I'd tell any lie I knew to get the children back. "How am I going to get to her?" I temporized. "I'm on my bike. I can't be carting a body across town." All truths. Truth hiding the lie beneath it.
"I'll contact her. Take the body to the chapel porch. Wait for her there."
Yeah. Right. "Okay." I managed to keep the ironic tone out of my voice. Then hope sizzled up in me. "Will Sabina feed him back--"
"No," Bruiser interrupted. "Sabina won't revive a young rogue. Don't ask. She's out-clan."
I closed the phone without a good-bye, tucked it away, drove the bloody stake into the ground, cleaning it. I'd wash it later, otherwise the acidic vamp blood would corrode the silver. My face stung where his blood had splattered me, and I used my saliva to clean it off. When I had my breath back, I tucked my crosses out of sight and stood. Secured my weapons.
With a grunt, I hefted the body up, over my shoulder. Already it stank of new death on top of the other scents: old death, vamp blood, and the grave. He had to be permanently dispatched. Otherwise there was a slim chance he'd rise at the full moon, a rogue of a different sort; a lot more deadly than the newly risen. There had been a few accounts over the years.
Placing my booted feet with care, I carried him out of the woods and into the moonlight. He was heavy, and I was tired. Beast's offer of strength didn't extend to non-emergency situations and it certainly didn't extend to carrying a vamp out of the woods. I stumbled twice and nearly dropped LeShawn once.
Ahead, I could see the chapel, candles lit in the blood-tinted stained glass windows, the light throwing bloody shadows onto the shell walkways and the grass all around. I was approaching from the back left, and as I rounded the building, I saw Sabina Delgado y Aguilera, the priestess of the vamps, on the front porch. Just as I had expected, she had been in the chapel. And maybe not all was lost. Maybe the priestess had info she didn't know she had, which might lead me to the rogue-makers. If I asked the right questions, she might say something that would help. If I was quick with the right words. If I said all the right things and kept all the other things silent. Might, maybe, if. I was running out of time. I took a steadying breath. People skills weren't my strongest talent.
Once again Sabina was wearing a white skirt and an outfit that looked like a nun's habit but made of heavy white cloth. The wimple hid her hair and framed her face with white, catching the moonlight and forming pools of darker shadows. Her hands were folded into her sleeves like a mother superior's and her face was set in an austere expression, ascetic and grave. Ha-ha. Vamp humor.