I dropped the pages on the table, stood, and poured hot water over the tea leaves in a green ceramic pot. Moving by muscle memory and instinct, I got out a mug, Cool Whip, and sugar, and prepared a cup. Thinking. Remembering a painting of a Cherokee slave on the wall of an old vamp’s house. She had yellow eyes like mine, and had probably been a skinwalker like me, but she couldn’t have been trained, or she would have fought her way free of her slavery. She was dead now. Another of my kind I had found and lost without ever meeting her. I put my own failed hopes of finding another like me aside and carried my mug back to the table and pages Alex had prepared.
Not only had de Allyon enslaved the Cherokee. According to historians, he was also the first man to own African slaves on land in what was now South Carolina. He was bloodthirsty in every way an undead nonhuman could be. The accounts, even couched in terms acceptable by the Europeans of that time period, were gruesome. He supposedly died of a fever in October 1526, disappearing and reappearing in Charleston in the early sixteen hundreds. He stayed there for fifty years, and disappeared again. He later terrorized Boston for a few years before the tea party of 1773. De Allyon resurfaced in Atlanta during the Reconstruction Period after the Civil War, eventually buying old plantation land and setting up a sharecropper system that “employed” nearly a thousand freed slaves.
Quickly thereafter, Lucas claimed most of the state of Georgia as Blood Master of Atlanta—all the Southeastern territory, excluding Florida, that was not claimed by Amaury Pellissier, Leo’s uncle. Now, it was possible that Lucas wanted Leo’s territory and figured he was the undead man to take it.
I flipped through the pages. There was still no financial trail to prove that Lucas wanted Leo’s territory. No proof that he had taken over Seattle and Sedona and Boston. No proof that he had sent his vamps to attack Leo in Asheville weeks ago or again at his clan home last night. No clues to where he was staying, or if he was even in the state. No nothing, except that he was powerful and a lot older and more vicious than Leo. And might be dominant enough to take what he wanted. I flipped back to the file on Blood-Call. It had businesses in Sedona, Seattle, Asheville, and Boston, with one slated to open in New Orleans in the next few months. Of course Blood-Call was also open in New York, San Francisco, L.A., Vegas, and a few other places, so it could be a coincidence, in which case I’d look stupid taking the information to Leo. Except for the fact that de Allyon owned Blood-Call, and had been Ramondo Pitri’s up-line employer, there was nothing physical or financial or real that actually proved Lucas Vazquez de Allyon was the bad guy who had attacked Leo in Asheville or was making vamps sick and taking over their territories.
But my gut was saying our bad guy was de Allyon, and that Greyson Labs and Blood-Call were part of the attack on the vamps. Somehow. Even though all I had was a name from history, it was time to tell Leo.
I gathered up my laptop and retreated to my bedroom again. Copying and pasting, I prepared a report for Leo and Bruiser on Blood-Call, the lab, and de Allyon, making certain that they understood my concern was mostly conjecture at this point. With a single keystroke, I sent it off and then curled around the laptop to question myself and second-guess my research.
I must have fallen asleep because I woke before dusk to the smell of steak grilling and a dead laptop battery. Groggy, I freshened up and put on a clean bra and shirt. Having men in the house was going to seriously impact my comfort clothes. Before I left my room, I dialed Leo, but it was Bruiser who answered. “H-h-hello, Jane.” His voice was low and warm and breathy, with a faint English accent and nearly a purr of sound. Bruiser. Who did not sound like himself.
“Bruiser. You sound . . . odd. Do you feel okay?”
“I discover that I quite like the way I feel.”
“Uh-huh.” Bruiser had been partially healed by Koun, a vamp who claimed to be pure Celt, and who would, if true, be much older than Leo. Then he’d been brought back from the dead, or near enough as not to matter, by an infusion of the blood of Bethany Salazar y Medina, a vamp who was nearly two thousand years old. And Katie had said, “George. You will live. And still mostly human. Do not despair.” “Crap,” I said softly.
Blood-servants were much faster and stronger than regular humans, because of the sips of vamp blood they regularly took in. They had better night vision, better hearing. I didn’t know what Bruiser was now, but I had a bad feeling about it. “Have you heard from Leo?”
“I have spoken with my master,” he said. “With your help, he escaped the Mithrans who held him for a time last night. But he was injured badly. I have sent the priestesses to his lair where he sleeps, to heal him, and his most loyal blood-servants, to feed him when he wakes and to complete his healing.” He paused, then added slowly, “He brought a Mithran with him when he escaped, and will be interrogating her soon. I am driving there. Leo requests your presence as well.”
Going to any vamp’s lair when he was injured and bleeding and had not been sent to earth to heal was not a smart move. I thought about the vamp Leo had captured. I didn’t want to be part of that, not again, with the silver and the questions and the stink of burning vamp-flesh, but I thought it was more likely he’d let her live if I was there to temper his mood. Assuming I didn’t tick him off and make him kill her outright.
Deep in my mind, Beast huffed. We will see the vampire in his den. We will know much, just as when we saw his hidden place in his Clan Den. I had seen one of Leo’s lairs, deep beneath the clan home, which was now burned to the ground and beneath it probably. And yes, I had learned a lot.
And hey, Leo paid the bills. I’d probably suffer vamp-consequences if I didn’t go, once Leo was up to meting them out.
I checked the time and said, “Okay.” And I wondered if I had just screwed up badly or made the smartest move a vamp-hunter could make.