Farther yet, at the edge of the woods, I saw two other Tequila Boys pulling an injured soldier off the battlefield. A vamp followed them to help with the healing; I thought it was Leo’s former daughter-in-law, Amitee Marchand, which was weird on all sorts of levels. Amitee hated Leo, but maybe a common enemy had healed some wounds.
Closer, I scented Innara and her anamchara, Jena, the mind-joined female vamp leaders of Clan Bouvier. One moved, the light of weapons-flash catching her face, and I stepped back into the shadows. Innara was no longer the thin, petite, elegant vamp of our few meetings, but a warrior, lips pulled back in a snarl to expose fangs glistening in the dark, a silver-plated short sword in one hand and a handgun in the other, her eyes vamped out, the blood red sclera like openings into Hades. Her muscles were sharply defined and blood smeared her mouth and chin.
The hairs on the back of my neck rose and bristled. Beast hissed deep inside. I had never seen a vampire at war, and her vision didn’t blink away, but reappeared in negative image on the inside of my lids. She was wearing a headset, a modern accouterment to her primitive fury.
She was upwind of me and so didn’t know I was there until I said, softly, “Innara, coleader of Clan Bouvier.”
Her head jerked and focused on me in the dark. She growled.
“It’s Jane,” I said. “Koun sent me to fight in his place. Will you tell the others so I don’t get shot?” After a moment her lips relaxed and she nodded, speaking softly into her mic. Derek turned to me and I lifted a hand, seeing the low-light-vision goggles on his face. “Where do you want me?” I asked just as softly, trusting her vamp hearing.
Innara moved with the air-popping speed of her kind and appeared next to me. I tried not to jerk, but didn’t quite manage it, and Innara smiled up at me. Not a human smile of amusement, but the hunting smile of the predator who saw prey flinch. “Leo’s Mercy Blade was to lead the assault on the barn, with Koun at his side. In light of his removal from the field of battle, we are reconsidering our options, and then the master’s Enforcer appears, well weaponed. How fortuitous.”
Great. Just freaking great. I had no doubt that Koun meant for me to take his place in the assault too. I looked back at the barn. “I’ll take Koun’s place. Fill me in.”
Instead, Innara spoke into her mic and a moment later I saw a form that seemed to float through the trees like a dark mist, like an owl in flight, his feet never appearing to touch the ground. “The little goddess will fight with me?” Gee DiMercy asked, his teeth flashing in the night. “We fought well in the past. This battle will be a joy and a thing of beauty to behold.”
I flipped the long blade I held, letting it settle firmly in my hand. Goddess. Yeah, right. “And the tactics?”
“Attack from two sides at once, create a diversion, and leave the way open for the Mithrans to eat the fallen. The human soldiers may clean up the leavings.”
“Wrong. No one eats or drains the vamps or the humans,” I said.
Innara growled and the hairs on my neck quivered in atavistic response. “No one tells me who I may not drain on the field of battle.”
I carefully did not make eye contact, to avoid ratcheting up the tension. “The vamps are diseased. And maybe on some chemical. Drug. Something. Can’t you smell it?”
Innara lifted her nose and sniffed, her head moving like a snake, in little jerking motions with each breath. “I smell nothing.”
“Well, I do. It smells metallic.”
“Like silver? Many of our old masters were poisoned when a blood-slave drank colloidal silver and brandy and allowed them to drain her.”
I knew that story. I lifted my blade and sniffed it, smelling the iron in the steel and the silver in the plating. I frowned. “Not silver. Not iron. But something metallic. Maybe a drug. Just don’t drink from them and don’t get bit. Okay?” Innara studied me. The disparity in our heights should have allowed me to feel superior, but I didn’t, I wasn’t. Not next to the fierce little vamp, her fangs picking up the moonlight.
“You think their bite is dangerous?” she asked. “You think the blood of their servants is poisoned?”
I shrugged. “I smell something that isn’t right.” And vamps were getting sick. I didn’t have to add that part.
“My anamchara and I will herd them into a small group. And then we will cut off their heads.”
I chuckled softly at the bloodthirsty comment. “It would be nice to have something left to question after. Also there are cops nearby. I’m surprised they haven’t shown up here already.”
“The police are human, and humans can be swayed to see what we wish them to.”
Which sooo did not make me happy.
Derek walked up, nearly silent in the night, with his soldier’s training, but Innara and Gee DiMercy turned, hearing him coming. “I won’t be part of a slaughter,” he said, “even if the fangheads are naturally armed and bat-shit crazy.”
“You will do as you are told, human,” Innara hissed.
“Enough,” I said. “Derek, do you have flashbangs?” At his nod, I said to Innara, “No slaughter. You and your vamps make a diversionary feint directly at the front of the barn. Gee, you go left with half of Derek’s men, aiming for the open, middle stall door. Derek, you and the rest of your men go in on the right”—I pointed—“to that door, but behind me. When we get to the barn, we throw in every stun grenade we have. It isn’t a confined space, which will limit the noise and concussion factor, but I’ll take what we can get with the light.
“After the blasts, we go in.” I pointed to Gee and me. “We’ll take care of any vamp old enough to still be standing after the candle flash. Derek and his men will round up anyone blinded and temporarily disabled.” Flashbangs produced enough noise and light to incapacitate a human and to blind vamps. Maybe permanently. But old vamps had enough power to survive things the young ones did not, and I’d never tested them on a master. Without a pause, I went on.