“I was blood-drunk, Jane. I wasn’t able to move, wasn’t able to fight, wasn’t able to stop them. I held you down and they hurt you. They forced me. I want you to know that. It was against my will.”
I didn’t say anything and he added, “When you left, I attacked Leo. He stopped me.” Bruiser held up the hand as explanation. “He backhanded me into a wall. Broke my hand and jaw. It was bad enough that I didn’t heal instantly even with all the Mithran blood in me.” Bruiser dropped the hand. “Leo needed your cooperation once he read your report and saw the name de Allyon. He remembered the problems his uncle Amaury had not so long ago, and he thought you wouldn’t agree with his plans. So he used me to get you. I’m sorry, Jane.”
Not so long ago. Only a man who had already lived more than a hundred years would think two centuries was not so long ago. I understood what had happened. I even understood my own stupidity in being part of it. But I was not ready to forgive. “And you defend him?”
“No. I explain him,” he growled. “And I apologize for myself. It’s what a primo does.”
It’s what a primo does. Yeah. Got that. “Get out, George. Now. Before I decide to let my Eli here hurt you.”
He heard his given name and he put it together, understanding that my calling him George and not Bruiser was important on many levels. And he processed the “my Eli.” George swiveled his head to the man standing one pace away. He considered Eli’s positioning, the placement of his feet, the relaxed posture. The two men, who had just been talking beer and sports, studied each other now like potential combatants, one trained by Uncle Sam to kill, the other still so full of vamp blood he was nearly healed in one day from wounds that would have incapacitated a human for weeks.
George turned his head to me, dismissing the soldier as if he posed no challenge. From the corner of my eye, I saw Eli’s mouth curl up in a smile. Without looking at him, I smiled too. It was one of those perfect agreement things that happens sometimes when two people understand each other on an instinctive level, on a snake-brain level. Eli and I had fought. We knew what moves we’d make and how fast. If it was needed. I saw his fingers curl in slightly.
I tucked the thumb of my free hand into my jeans at my waist, to indicate action wasn’t necessary. Yet. “I’ll do my job for Leo,” I said to George, “but not because of his forced blood-bond. I’ll do my job because I killed a man in Asheville. Because humans were killed there and here on my watch. You tell that blood-sucking fiend I said that.
“If there was a dinner invitation, it’s rescinded. Get out of my house. You know where the door is.” I stepped out of the way and gestured with the bottle at the door.
George’s mouth firmed, an obstinate gesture that said he was going to disagree. But he didn’t. He walked past me out the door and closed it behind him with a firm snap. That sound said something important, but I didn’t want to deal with it, not now. I followed and keyed the dead bolt, then went back to the living room. Eli and Alex hadn’t moved. I leaned against the wall and finished my beer, watching them.
“Are you okay?” Alex asked.
“Just ducky. But if your brother doesn’t feed me I may eat him.”
Eli laughed at the double entendre, but he went outside to the grill and came back in with four steaks. The Kid cleaned off a place and put away the unused dishes. We ate in silence at the kitchen table, companionable silence. I liked it. And I got the extra steak.
*
After dinner, while not-so-Stinky Alex cleaned up the dishes and griped about not having a dishwasher, Eli and I stayed at the table, going over the day’s intel. “There might be a correlation we haven’t considered, between the Blood-Call businesses and the cities where de Allyon has taken over,” Eli said, passing a printout to me.
“I’m listening.”
“De Allyon was making vamps sick. What better way than to have them drink from sick humans at Blood-Call?”
I remembered thinking at one time, in the last hectic days, that vamps were being made sick by drinking diseased blood, but that had seemed impossible unless a normal, natural plague had entered the human population. There had been no reports of horrific human illness in the media, and no way could that have been kept quiet.
There were also so many cities where Blood-Call was operating, cities that had no sign of sickness. The lack of plague and the specificity of attack had made me put the idea on the back burner. But then, there were the sick humans in Seattle who had claimed they were getting better. They weren’t Blood-Call employees, they were blood-servants who lived and worked at the Seattle Clan Home. Without explaining, I pulled my cell and dialed the Seattle Clan Home. When a woman answered, I said, “This is Jane Yellowrock. I was there a few days ago, and took some blood from some blood-servants who were left on the premises after the revolt staged by the Mercy Blade failed. Are they still alive? Did they get well?”
The woman said stiffly, “Yes and yes. And then our new master removed them. Don’t call again.” There was a click and the call ended.
I stared at the cell and smiled. “Of course he did.” I looked up at the brothers and said, “Alex, how certain are you about the money trail of the corporations that own Blood-Call?”