My primary mission was accomplished, which meant a nice fee would be electronically deposited into my account as soon as Leo got the package. Mentally, I calculated my payment for the travel part of this gig. I was getting a base fee for each visit, travel pay, hazard pay, and I was getting a bonus for each sick vamp who let me bleed him or her. A very nice bonus, because vamps didn’t give up their blood to anyone who wasn’t family, scion, servant, master, or slave. Never. Now if it was just as easy to get a sample from the Seattle MOC, I’d be set.
Behind me down the road, headlights pulled onto my street. I took note of their shape and the outline of the car they were attached to. GMC sedan. Another car moved parallel to mine one street over, which could be a standard tailing procedure, but when I turned right at the next intersection, the cars didn’t follow. They pulled on past and disappeared. I didn’t know Sedona at all, but maybe they were just leaving a club. Or getting off work somewhere on the night shift.
It was long after midnight when I dialed Leo’s number, but it’s never too late to call a vamp. Bruiser answered, his voice like a long, low caress. “Jane.”
I couldn’t help my smile. Or Beast’s inner purr. Beast likes Bruiser—George Dumas—and though my cat had been oddly quiescent, she always paid attention to Bruiser. He was Leo Pellissier’s right-hand blood-meal, and arguably the most powerful nonvamp in New Orleans. He probably had more political clout than the governor and he definitely had better looks and charisma than any purely human politician.
I opened my mouth to say, “I have a report.” What came out was “Hi.” And a soft, sexy-sounding “Hi,” at that. I clamped my mouth shut. Bruiser chuckled at my tone, that secure, masculine laugh men get when they know a woman is interested. Which ticked me off.
Two months ago, I had lost my first boyfriend since my early twenties and I was not in the market for another. Especially one who was bound to a vamp for his very existence. Blood-servants like Bruiser must have drops and sips of vamp blood on a regular basis to keep their vamp-blood-induced extended-youth thing going. I was not taking second place behind Leo. So even though Bruiser was sex on a stick, he was not going to be mine.
Mine, Beast murmured.
I firmed my tone and said, “I have a report.”
I could hear the smile in his voice when he said, “Go ahead.”
I talked for twenty minutes as I drove out of the city, toward the stark country of red hills, cliffs, bluffs, and buttes, detailing everything that had happened. The sky was black overhead as I drove, too big, too dark, with too many stars. Beast liked it. Sedona was a pale glow, like a halo on the horizon. I finished with “Ro wouldn’t name her new master. She looks and smells sick. She’s covered in pustules. She’s bleeding from her nose, and when I took her blood—”
“You obtained her blood?”
“I got it. It’s in the FedEx box. But when I stuck her she didn’t stop bleeding on her own. Nik had to spit on her arm to stop it. Which, by the way, was gross.”
“Spit? Not lick?”
A familiar pair of headlights pulled behind my car. GMC sedan. Behind it was another car, about a quarter mile back; it had the same configuration as the car riding parallel to me earlier. Beast is not prey, she whispered into my mind. “Right,” I said to them both. “I’m being followed. If I’m not back at the airport in an hour, tell the pilot to—” I stopped. The substitute pilot who had been one of the few people who knew exactly where I was going and when I’d get there. Before I could say all that to Bruiser, the sedan launched at me. I tossed the cell. Took the wheel in two hands. And floored the car.
I wasn’t fast enough. The sedan roared up. I gripped the wheel hard enough to make the leather groan. The car rammed me. My spine whiplashed. The seat belt cut into my chest and abdomen before slamming me back into the seat.
“Jane?” Bruiser’s voice, tinny. Far away. From the floor.
The sedan raced closer. Rammed me again. The tail of my car spun into the oncoming lane. I hit the brakes. The antilock braking system kicked in. The car danced across the road. That shouldn’t have happened, was my last thought as my car hit something slick on the road and its slight spin turned into a twisting spiral. Off the road and down.
The car bucked over the rough terrain. Up into the air, the headlights illuminating the red stone of a low cliff wall and the night sky, and down, into a ditch. The car’s frame shrieked, contorting as its own momentum forced it at an angle up the other side. My window flexed and shattered, raining me with rounded nodules of safety glass. Down the car went again, at a sharp angle, a long, fast slide. A bouncing, jouncing ride that ended suddenly. Too hard. Whiplash took me again, from my toes to the top of my head. The air bags released with explosions of sound. Socked me in the face. I saw stars and then nothing.
I roused to the sound of an engine hissing. My headlights picked out a spiny cactuslike plant through the bashed windshield. Bruiser’s voice called me from somewhere, insistent. Frantic. My ears were ringing and I couldn’t focus to locate the cell. But my brain was starting to work again.
Footsteps were approaching the car. One pair, booted. Skidding downhill over the rock and dirt. In the far distance, maybe near the road, I heard a voice talking, the words lost in the buzzing aftermath of being hit in the face. The breeze shifted, blowing into the car. I smelled gun oil and cheap aftershave. Over it all, I smelled the scent of a blood-servant. But not Rosanne’s. Another vamp. Not quite a stranger, yet not entirely familiar. But exactly like the blue-eyed man I had left bound on Rosanne’s floor.