“I want to drink of you in every way,” Leo Pellissier said, his voice dropping into spellbind timbre.
I swallowed at the images his voice brought to mind, and managed to say, “No way. But . . .” I took a breath, not quite sure what I was promising. “I need a favor. And I’ll trade a blood meal for it if I have to.”
There was total silence for just an instant. Sarcasm lining each word, Leo said, “What a lovely proposal. I can take an unwilling Valkyrie to sip upon, without true blood exchange, without a true joining, in barter for an unnamed favor. No.”
Blood exchange? True joining? What were they? I did not have time for this. “Look, you sorry, bloodsucking bastard,” I ground out. “Rick LaFleur is dying in surgery at Tulane Medical from a rogue attack. He needs vamp blood. What do I have to trade to get it for him?”
“You should have said so. George,” Leo said, his mouth no longer at the phone. “The car. Now!” The line clicked off.
I started to retort before I realized he was gone. I looked at the phone with its blinking CALL DISCONNECTED notice. “So, am I your dinner or not?” I asked it. Beast hacked with laughter. “Not funny,” I said to her. She just laughed harder. Beast has a weird sense of humor.
I took St. Charles Avenue, tooled in to the Garden District, and entered on Third Street. I stopped three blocks in, zipped up, and went the rest of the way on foot. A gentle rain began to fall as I walked, pattering on the trees overhead, wetting the street where the canopy of leaves parted to reveal the cloud-covered sky. A dog barked inside a house, demanding, not alerting, probably needing to go outside to do his business. Thunder sounded, close now. My feet were almost silent on the street. Music and TV sounds were tinny, so muffled no human would have heard them. Air conditioners and electric wires whooshed and sizzled. Beast was on full alert, energy humming in my veins, my senses ratcheted up.
The house where I had visited with the blood-servant twins was palely lit, the light of candles or maybe lamps flickering between closed window draperies. I was certain whom I had seen in the moments the liver-eater’s gaze and mine were locked, while he shifted. The Cherokee I had expected, but Grégoire was a huge surprise.
I had been in Clan Arceneau’s house and I knew that no rotting liver-eater was using the premises as a lair, but someone there would know where he was. I stopped on the walkway, only now realizing that the iron gates were open and no one had come to the door . . . and the drapes were closed. Drapes closed at night seemed backward. Something wasn’t right. Anxiety raced down my spine on little spider feet. Pausing, I stood in deep shadow, taking in the scents, letting my eyes adjust. The wrought-iron fence glinted in the streetlights like wet blood. The pattern of fleur-de-lis was like the pattern on Katie’s grillwork at the freebie house, and oddly like the brand on Katie’s arm. I wondered when some distant master of Clan Arceneau had turned a skinwalker. And how soon after that he had met his demise, to be replaced by the walker. And if anyone in his clan knew that Grégoire had gone rogue. Useless questions.
I lifted my face to the night, drawing the air over my tongue and through my nose, smelling, tasting the pheromones and subtle chemicals that permeated the night. Same as before. Chemical fertilizers, traces of yappy-dog and house-cat urine and stool, weed killer, dried cow manure, exhaust, rubber tires, rain, oil on the streets. And faintly, very faintly, the smell of the liver-eater when he wasn’t all rotten and stinky. Well. How about that.
I dialed Leo. When he answered, I said, “I’m at Clan Arceneau. Turn off the house alarms.”
“What?” he said, his voice haughty and offended, traffic noises in the background.
“Do it. Now. You got one minute.” I closed the phone, turned it off, and tucked it into a pocket, hoping he or Bruiser would do what I needed. Finding my timing technique amusing, I counted, “One Mississippi. Two Mississippi . . .”
Sixty seconds later, I walked up the front walk, unstrapping the Benelli, not that I intended to fire unless I had to. Collateral damage, possibly killing a twin or another human blood-servant, would mean a prison sentence unless I could prove self-defense. My contract only covered me for accidentally or purposefully killing vamps helping the rogue. I checked the vamp-killers in their sheaths, settling the stakes as I walked. I pulled a cross, one of inlaid silver and wood. On the wide front porch, I rang the bell. Nothing like a frontal approach.