Very young meant lack of control. Rogue of a different kind. I rammed my left forearm, powered by all my body weight, into the back of his elbow. Into the joint. His arm bent across his body. Bones snapped as the joint broke inward. He roared.
His grip fell away from my right wrist. I continued my forward motion. Slapped the cross onto the side of his neck. He screamed. Skin smoked. His left arm sliced up, vamp nails slashing. I jumped back. The cross ripped away. Blisters wept blood. The vamp reached for his neck. Giving me the opening I needed.
I reversed my right hand. Caught his injured wrist. Pulled him off balance. Toward me. Out of the stall. Away from Bliss. I twisted my body. Pulling. Stepping back. Stuck out a leg. He fell across my thigh. Hit the floor. I shoved the stake against his back. Over his heart. Thrusting deep, into his flesh. He screamed and twisted. Ripped the stake out of his flesh with the motion. Faster than I could follow, he was gone.
Time fell inward, speeding fast. The music and voices and the smell of blood crashed into me. Two bouncers filled the doorway. Still moving Beast fast, I stood straight and palmed the stake back into the turban. The silver cross on its broken thong I was stuck with. I raised both palms in the universal gesture of “I’m weaponless; please don’t shoot me.” Letting them see the cross, dangling. They paused at the sight of a girl, surprise in their faces. They were clearly expecting something or someone else. Odd.
I said, “A vamp just attacked a girl. She’s in trouble.” I pointed over my shoulder. When they hesitated, I said, “She’s bleeding bad,” and slid between them, into the crowd that was gathering. There was nothing I could do for Bliss that the bouncers couldn’t. But I could track the vamp. Young. Very young, Beast had thought. Young enough that he hadn’t learned how to use his voice and seduction to get a meal. Young enough to be attacking girls. And not the vamp scent I had recognized when I entered.
The young vamp should have been under the power of his master, not allowed into public until he had learned control. Which sometimes took long years when they were chained to the basement wall in their master’s house. Why was he free if he couldn’t be trusted? Either he got away, like a zoo animal over the fence, or he was an accident.
He had to be stopped.
I breathed in, finding the scent of the vamp on the air, Bliss’s blood on his clothes, bright as a signpost. He was leaving an easy trail and I had a scent marker on me, in my turban. I dove through the screaming crowd and outside.
CHAPTER 10
Semper fi
I trailed the young vamp while half unwrapping my turban to retrieve Beast’s travel pack. I strapped it around my waist with the extra crosses now hanging out, before re-wrapping the turban. The vamp was moving fast through the near-empty streets, showing a familiarity with the alleys and narrow passageways. He was leaving a trail so strong that I didn’t need to shift to follow it.
From the travel pack, I pulled my cell phone and speed-dialed number five, the head of the vamp council. Not that I wanted to be talking to Leo Pellissier, but as council head, he had to be informed about the attack of a human by an uncontrolled vamp. The Bruiser answered.
“This is Jane Yellowrock,” I said softly, so my voice didn’t carry on the still night air. “Let me speak to Leo. Vamp council business.”
“It’ll have to go through me first,” Bruiser said. “Mr. Pellissier’s policy. Sorry.” He didn’t sound sorry.
I dodged into yet another alley. The scent of the Mississippi was fading, the slightly sour scent of Lake Pontchar train growing. I had left the Quarter, heading north. I could smell slum close by. “Fine. I’m on the trail of a young, un-mastered vamp who just attacked a female in a bar bathroom. I’m about to finish what I started in the bar and shove a stake in him. This is the obligatory notification of a vamp hunter to the blood-master of the city.”
“Mr. Pellissier and I are on the way. Give me the location,” Bruiser said. I spotted a street sign, its pole bent in two as if a car had hit it and no one had repaired the damage. I had no idea which of the two streets I was on so I just gave Bruiser both names. “When you reach the corner, whichever direction you’re coming from, follow the sharp-pointed, two-night moon.”
Bruiser said, “Say what?”
I was speaking Beast-talk. I shook my head to clear it. “Follow the moon.”
Moon different every night. Never same, Beast thought at me. I ignored her. “I’ve gone two blocks. I’m getting close to his nest.”
“And how do we know that?” he asked.