Katie glanced up the bar and called out into the odd silence, “Barkeep. Another drink!”
Her words broke a spell over the crowd; on the stage, the players seemed to shake themselves and put down their instruments, announcing a short break. Canned music came over the loudspeaker system, Aaron Neville singing “Jailhouse.” The humans in the place started to move again, recuperating from the blast of vampire energies, and I spotted the ones still unmoving in the crowd. Vamps, three of them. Each of them focused on Katie.
“Katie, why do you want Leo dead?” I asked, keeping an eye on the vamps.
“He buried me with the blood of all the clans,” she said, surprised. When I made a little, so what, gesture, she said, “He gave me the power of them all, and then he took it away. He drained me near unto true death. I would still be chained with the scions had not the Mercy Blade found me and set my mind free. It isn’t . . .” She struggled for the right word. “It isn’t fair.”
I grinned and picked up my Coke again, draining it to exchange the glass for the fresh one Bascomb brought. The concept of fairness from a vamp was amusing, but I had a feeling that laughing would win me nothing but a battle I wasn’t dressed for. And my momentary concern that Katie might be the vamp trying to get Leo and Bruiser arrested for murder eased. She was too nutso to have arranged the scenario. Bascomb wiped up the mess of Katie’s spilled drink.
When he left, I said, “So, challenge him to personal combat.”
“He has my blood, my power,” she spat. “I will not win.”
“He challenged you to personal combat when you were unable to fight back at full strength due to the dolore, which by vamp law isn’t an issue. But he won and didn’t kill you, which means he respects you and wants you alive.” Katie looked up at that, her drink poised halfway to her mouth, her exquisite eyes opened wide in surprise. “He drank from you against your will, right?” Katie nodded and sipped, her face puzzled. “I don’t know much about vamp law, but I think you’re number two in the city, now. Ask him to make you his heir.”
Katie pulled in a harsh breath and met my eyes again, hers going half vampy. “His heir,” she whispered. “Yes.” And suddenly, in a snap of imploding air, she was gone. Katie, pulling the vamp gift for speed that only the old, powerful ones have. And I got stiffed for her drink bill. Figures. Dang vampires.
CHAPTER 18
Woad
I danced another set, accepting a drink from Tex, the vamp who had been patrolling the compound with the huge dog, letting him lead me into a bump and grind dance to one of the band’s original country songs, the music too loud and the crowd too boisterous to converse. Beast watched him through my eyes with an intensity that was always surprising to me. She was too interested in vamps for her own good. I scent-searched while we danced, but never caught a whiff of Tyler, Rick, or anyone else I hoped I might find.
When the dance was over, I left the bar, walking through the night, the air like a sauna, my skin glistening with perspiration, my mind free and clear and open. Dancing did that to me—driving away the demons, letting me think. My dancing shoes made soft clips of sound. My dress moved with the barest caress across my heated flesh. My muscles felt relaxed and supple. And with the night breezes blowing a rainstorm in off the Gulf of Mexico, I let my mind float free.
And narrowed the focus of the events of the last few days, starting with the Mercy Blade. He had spelled me the first time we met, with that weird bluish spell that crawled up my flesh. Beast had stopped his enchantment, but I hadn’t been thinking like myself since then; I hadn’t been thinking about Girrard DiMercy at all, and his scent had been on Safia’s body.
Kemnebi’s scent had been there too, and in a far more personal way, but he didn’t strike me as stupid. Not stupid enough to murder his girlfriend in the business office of the most powerful vamp in the Southern states. Strike Kem off my list.
But then there was Tyler Sullivan. The Mercy Blade and Tyler. The two men were the keys to everything. Whatever the heck it all was.
The front porch lights and the living room lights were lit when I reached the house, and I unbuckled and removed my dancing shoes on the front porch before entering, feet silent on the wood floors. Bruiser and Evangelina were sitting in the living room, a Parcheesi Royal Edition game board on the table between them. Evangelina was dressed in some silky pale pink top, which should have contrasted poorly with her red hair but didn’t, and skintight jeans. She looked svelte and toned and oddly younger than I’d noticed, which was strange. Evangelina had always struck me as a Valkyrie warrior woman, brusque and demanding and in charge, riding roughshod over all opposition. But lately she was looking softer, more feminine, far sweeter than I remembered, with a glow to her skin.
When I stopped inside the front door, she was looking up at Bruiser with a teasing expression. Crap. She was wearing lipstick. And eye shadow. The sexual tension in the room was heavy enough to stub my bare toes on. Evangelina was flirting with Bruiser, leaning so close the pink of her silk shirt covered them in a pinkish glow.
Beast roared up into my eyes. Mine, she thought at me. And in the same instant, I remembered Rick. My heart did a little dump and splat. Rick. “Not really,” I said aloud to my alter ego. “Not now.”