“Nothing is cracking, Aunt Jane.”
I chuckled and said, “Does your mama know you’re using her cell, Angie Baby?” Angelina was my goddaughter, Molly’s daughter, a scary-strong witch who had come into her powers a decade too young. She lived with those powers battened and corded down and yet, she still knew things. Could do things. I’d seen her.
“No. I’m bein’ a bad girl. But you gots to stay away from the blue man.”
Shock thudded through me. “Okay, Angie Baby. I promise.”
“Cross your heart?”
I dutifully crossed my heart. “And hope to die.”
“No. Don’t do that! You be careful! I love you, Aunt Jane.”
Tears stung my eyes. “I’ll be careful. I promise. I love you too, Angie Baby.”
CHAPTER 5
You Can’t Blame a Vamp-Killer for Trying
I wove my way through New Orleans city streets to vamp HQ, making a few stops on the way. I had a report to deliver and I had discovered that it was easier to give one in person than to write it out and have it messengered over. Vamps aren’t big on the Internet. They want things on vellum or parchment with fancy penmanship and flowery words. I was a modern girl. While my computer skills were only okay, my penmanship stank.
I motored up to the gate at the vamps’ official headquarters. For the first time I’d ever known it, the place was locked down. The wrought iron gate was shut, security lights lit up the grounds, and an armed guard walking a big brute of a mastiff was patrolling. The guard smelled like vamp and not blood-servant. Weird. The suckheads never did their own chores when there was a blood-servant around to do it for them.
There was no sign in front of the stone-faced, multistory building—never had been—but the arched windows, the long line of steps up to the door, and the fa?ade were bright with security lights. I spotted new cameras on the eaves and, with Beast-sight, saw laser paths lacing the grounds. My old pal Bruiser had been a busy boy, installing and integrating the hardware I had proposed to upgrade the system. Bruiser was Leo’s prime blood-servant, head of security for the vamps in the city of New Orleans, but he’d been a much more laid-back guy until lately. When Leo had cleaned house by killing off his enemies, not all of them had been so easily dispatched.
I sat-walked my bike up to a new intercom with a camera and pushed the little red button. When a voice responded, I said into the speaker, “Jane Yellowrock, with a report.”
“Please remove the face mask and present proper picture identification.”
I stuck out my tongue, though I had it properly back in my mouth when I pulled off the helmet, but there was nothing I could do about the cheeky grin. Not sure what proper identification might mean to a vamp, from a zippered pocket I dug out my bike license for North Carolina, my Private Investigator ID for the same state, and my official rogue-vamp-hunting card with the cutesy slogan. It was always good for a laugh with the long-lived vamps. This one didn’t chuckle when I presented them to the camera, but the gate did swing open.
I was met at the bottom of the long steps by the vamp and the dog. The vamp was an old one, a master himself, one of Leo’s loyal scions, though I couldn’t remember his name, only that he had a Texas accent. Lot of Texans in my life tonight. I called him Tex, and he didn’t seem to mind. The dog growled at me, showing teeth, but I wasn’t impressed. I’d been growled at by bigger critters tonight. “Knock it off, doggie. Howdy, Tex. What’s kicking?”
The vamp lifted one side of his mouth in a half smile and pulled the dog to heel. The growling subsided. “Evening, Miz Yellowrock. New security protocols set up by the boss, including an air lock inside the front door in the foyer, with an armed guard.”
“I hope so. What good is a guard if he isn’t carrying?”
Tex let his smile widen. “Couldn’t agree more, ma’am. You’ll have to remove your weapons there, before being escorted inside to Mr. Pellissier.”
Though vamp citizenship was being considered in Congress, at the moment they were treated as aliens, and carrying a weapon beyond the foyer of a council house would merit the same punishment as taking a weapon into a foreign embassy or a federal courtroom. It was a good way to get jumped on and locked up. “He’s here tonight?”
Something shuttered behind Tex’s eyes. “Mr. Pellissier is here every night, ma’am.” He turned away, pulling the mastiff with him. “Take care, you hear?” There was a warning in his tone, not that I needed one. Leo had been worse than unpredictable for weeks. But every night in vamp HQ, and not in his clan home? That was strange.
I made my way up the long steps to the front door, cataloguing the security changes. The front door was opened by a blood-servant flunky with the dead eyes of a burned out soldier—until he recognized me. A huge, gap-toothed grin lit the face of a seriously big guy; tall, well-muscled and bald, he looked like an escapee from the World Wrestling Federation. I grinned in return. “Wrassler,” I said. I nicknamed almost everyone I met, and had never asked Wrassler his real name, though his had evolved down from WWF-Guy to WWF, to the current Wrassler. He seemed to like the latest moniker.
“If it isn’t little Janie. Come on in.”
I shook my head at the name and looked over the air lock. It took up a six-by-six-foot space inside the foyer, and it was much more than it appeared, constructed of bulletproof glass and reinforced titanium bars. It was seriously cool. “Where do you want the weapons?”