I took the stairs to the second floor cautiously, the M4 pointed up, the handgun covering my backside. There were four bedrooms and ten sick blood-servants. Crap. There was no info anywhere on blood-servants getting sick. This was new, and not in a good way. The humans were sick like I had never seen anyone sick before, covered in pustules, many of them ruptured and seeping onto the bedding. The closest thing I could have guessed was smallpox. They were the source of the raspy breathing and moans.
I climbed the stairs to the third floor, which was empty, and then into the finished attic. The smell of rot about blew me away, and with Beast’s experience, I can take a lot of decomposition. The upper floor was an apartment, and on the floor lay a woman. She had died by multiple gunshots. She had been beheaded, the way one would kill a vamp or were, to make certain of death. I kept the Benelli on the doorway to the stairs and slid the handgun into its holster. Avoiding the body fluids, I dropped to one knee at her side and reached into her mouth, feeling for fangs. Nothing. Human teeth. So why the beheading?
In the corner, something moved in the air currents. A bright blue feather, downy, fluffy. I swiveled on my knee and studied the rest of the floor. There were a lot of blue feathers, everywhere. But no bird or boa to explain why.
I drew a steel blade and pulled on Beast’s vision to look at the woman. She still looked human. With the blade, I sliced down. Fast. Hard. And for an instant, I saw, not a woman, but a huge blue – and rosy-hued bird. “Crap,” I whispered. The woman was an Anzu—a Mercy Blade. The supernatural species lived under a blanket of glamours that could be disrupted momentarily by the proper application of a steel blade. They were fierce fighters. If she was dead, then the clan home had been physically attacked as well as the vamps made sick. There was no sign of them here; they were likely hiding in their lairs.
I went back to the second floor and asked permission of the sick humans who were conscious, and took their blood, promising to call for ambulances. Oddly, they weren’t panicked or worried, and even insisted that they were getting better, which sounded just plain weird, unless the disease affected their brains, like meningitis. The one I stuck last seemed the most lucid, and I asked, “What happened here? I thought your MOC had accepted a new master.”
“Our Mercy Blade said we must fight, not accept the fist at our throats. She said we would win with her fighting at our sides. It was a mistake.” Tears leaked from her eyes. “They killed her. They killed Mithrans, and then they . . . spent some time with us.”
I had a feeling that “spent some time with us” had been really, really bad. “Did any of your vamps survive the attack? Are they in their lairs?”
“Some died true-dead. Some didn’t,” she whispered. “We killed four of theirs, though they were old and powerful. But when we were overwhelmed, I told my masters to run. I haven’t seen them since then.”
After I obtained her blood, I washed my hands thoroughly in the hall bath. Even with gloves, I wasn’t taking chances. Like Ro, the humans had kept bleeding and I had to apply pressure bandages at the puncture sites.
Back downstairs, I found an Apple laptop and shoved it into my tote with the blood, grabbed up several cell phones, and added them in too. Maybe the call histories would tell us something. I also found a business card tacked to a corkboard near a rack of cell chargers. It was black, white, and red, with a stylized drawing of a neck with holes in it, bleeding fresh blood, like a blood-whore’s calling card. The name on the card was Blood-Call, the number and address local. It was the only thing on the board, which was odd, so I pocketed the card. On a desk, I found several other business cards, most of them of local businessmen: lawyers, accountants, a PR firm, people who might conceivably want a vamp’s business and money. I found another Blood-Call card, this one creased and folded as if it had been carried around for a while. I took all the cards.
Standing just inside the front door, breathing fresh air through the open crack, I dialed Leo’s number and told his secundo to wake Bruiser. He did it without demur and when Bruiser came on, he sounded chipper and alert, even though it was his sleep schedule. I told him what I’d seen and done, everything but the part about Mercy Blade being Anzu. I wasn’t sure that the vamps knew that part. “I have blood samples from four human individuals, and had a devil of a time getting them to stop bleeding.
“You have any idea why these guys are still sick when their master gave in to the vamp we’re chasing?”
“Someone rebelled after the fact, and the new master is teaching them a lesson.” Which was totally something a vamp would do. Bruiser went on. “I’ll find Gee DiMercy and tell him about the Mercy Blade. You get out of there and back here. I’ll handle calling ambulances and alerting the authorities about the pla—the disease.”
I hung up and stepped outside, still thinking about the word he had almost used for a disease that had attacked vamps and humans. Plague.
*
The stench clung to me, so bad even the patient driver’s nose curled, so I tipped him two twenties when he dropped me off at the small, private airport in the boonies outside Seattle. The terminal was a single-story building with all the charm of a saltbox, but it lit up the early night like a beacon. This afternoon, I had passed through with a minimum of effort, even carrying the weapons, guessing that Leo’s money had greased enough palms to make that happen. But there had been three people in the terminal. Now, as I stepped inside, there was no one.
My hackles rose. The car that brought me, and was the fastest way outta here, drove off, tires abrading on cement. I stepped to the right of the windowed door, wall at my back. I pulled the M4 and the Walther that was loaded with silver. It didn’t have the stopping power of the H&K, but it was the weapon of choice when there was a likelihood of collateral damage—innocent humans who might get killed. The Benelli would take care of any vamps.