There were more fluids inside, and I pulled the cold bottles out, silently reading labels, putting them back. Only one bottle was unlabeled, a brown glass bottle in the door. It was sealed with a cork, which I eased out, like I’d seen Leo do a champagne cork. Decorking seemed to be a guy job, among humans, vamps, and Onorios, like taking out the trash, or hammering nails in boards. Not that I couldn’t do trash and nails. I totally could. But they felt it was a man’s job. Cleaning their own toilets, that they were less receptive to. I eased the cork back and forth until it slipped free. The stink of vamp blood filled the room.
Edmund whirled to me. His shoulders hunched, fangs slowly schnicked down on their little hinges. “Edmund?” I asked. His eyes bled scarlet and his pupils dilated. He was vamping out. This was not good. I had a feeling it was bad form to kill your primo on the first full day of business. I pushed the cork back into the bottle. Took a vamp-killer by the grip. “I will end you,” I said.
“And I’ll fill you full of silver, bro,” Eli said. He had two handguns aimed at Edmund’s back. I stepped to my right and out of his angle of shot. “You already got silvered up this week. Twice could finish you.”
Bruiser said, softly, “Jane, call him.”
“Do what?”
“You shared blood. Call him. Someone else is trying to influence him, someone he once trusted and with whom he shared blood. Only a stronger master can ease him from this path.”
“Not sure how to do that.”
“He’s fighting the call. Give him something else to think about.”
“Beast wants to hunt cows from inside your fancy car,” I said instantly. “With the top down and Eli driving around a muddy field. You don’t calm down, I’m taking her hunting.” I leaned closer and grinned, showing teeth. “She’ll claw up your leather upholstery. Maybe scent-mark your carpet.”
Inside me Beast perked up. Hunt cow? In Edmund car with no head? Which I figured was her way saying with the top down.
“Yes,” I replied to her aloud. “With the top down and a mountain lion in the passenger seat. She’ll pull a dead cow into the car and feast on it. Entrails everywhere. It’ll be a bloodbath.”
Edmund swallowed. His lids closed and stayed that way for three seconds. Opened. “You wouldn’t.”
“Oh, yes I would. She wants your car. Bad. And she wants to drag a full-grown cow into the seat and sit there, looking out over a pasture while she eats it.”
Beast will hunt cow! In Edmund car!
Ed’s eyes started bleeding back to human-ish. His fangs folded back on their little hinges with a snap. “My car is a Thunderbird Maserati 150 GT. It is a 1957 prototype for which I paid over three million dollars. One does not hunt in a Maserati GT. One does not—”
“If I have to kill you, the car is mine,” I interrupted.
“I—” He stopped. Focused on me. “What happened?”
“I opened this.” I held out the brown bottle. “And you decided to hunt me. Then there’s the storm. I’m guessing some combo of the two?”
Edmund accepted the sealed bottle and brought it close to his nose. He took a tiny sniff. With a pop of displaced air he was gone. I caught the bottle before it hit the floor. “We’ll take this to Leo,” I said to Bruiser.
“Indeed.”
I frowned. Indeed was a Leo word. Formal and . . . Leo-ishy. This place and this bottle were having an effect on my people.
I tucked the bottle under my arm and said, “Let’s go to HQ.”
Fortunately, Edmund was sitting in the limo when we got there, staring out the far window at the storm. I gave the bottle to Shemmy and had him raise the privacy panel. “To keep the smell away from our fanghead.”
I got the feeling that Shemmy was disappointed, that he liked being part of the action, but he complied, opening the communication channel instead.
“Don’t pout, Eddie,” I said, crawling in to sit beside the vamp.
His head turned to me in one of those inhuman gestures they can do. “I am not pouting,” he said distinctly. “Pouting is for children. And my name. Is. Not. Eddie.”
“Good to know. HQ, James,” I instructed.
“My name isn’t James,” Shemmy said, helpfully.
“Picky, picky, picky,” I said.
CHAPTER 11
Did You Know You’re Being Tailed by PsyLED?
On the way to HQ, we got notice from Scrappy, Leo’s secretary, that a small cruise ship was trying to dock and that all sorts of local, state, and federal officials were on site. Leo wanted us to check it out. Of course he did, in a rainstorm that was getting, if possible, worse. This night, like the previous one, was never-ending, and I’d had only a half hour nap, at best.
By the time we made the necessary blocks and avoided one-way streets and congestion caused by the storm, the ship was motoring back down the Mississippi for international waters. I got a quick look at the boat, hoping I could tell if it was the invisible ship in Lake Borgne, but I couldn’t tell diddly. I watched the byplay of the multiagency law enforcement and government people standing and gesturing in the rain.
Bruiser said softly, “On site is one state senator, two ICE agents—immigration officials—two suits from the Secret Service, four marked cars. Two FBI agents, there.” He pointed to the man and woman with oversized umbrellas. “Two detectives from NOPD out in the middle of the night, when there are currently no dead bodies and no weapons of mass destruction. All of this is anomalous.”
“Why don’t you go to talk to them?” I said. “I’m the MOC’s female Enforcer. You can be one of the guys.”
“Or you could just kill them and save us some time,” Edmund snipped.
I swiveled in my seat. “Or you could swim to the cruise ship, climb on board, find out who’s there, what they want, and save us even more time,” I said.
Edmund made a sort of blowing noise and looked away again. I had a feeling the smell of the blood bottle was still getting to him.
“What was in the bottle?” I asked him. “Whose blood?”
“It was . . .” He shook his head. “I do not know. But it reminded me of the aroma of mixed blood, when the Mithrans gathered and Katie was put to the earth, to heal.” He was watching me as if he wanted me to say something, admit something. No way was I admitting that I’d been there in bubo bubo form. Not happening. An uncertain silence built.
Bruiser looked back and forth between us. Having nothing to add to the conversation, he opened the door and said, in one of the typically British turns of phrase that occasionally slipped out of his mouth, “I’ll try not to delay you unduly.” He left the limo, walking to the gathered officers, his body limned by the headlights. He was beautiful, and his butt, in the wet leathers, was simply amazing.
“Stop,” I said to Eli before he could tell me to get a room. My partner chuckled evilly.
Moments later, Bruiser walked back, his body again caught in the lights, rain falling lightly onto him. He got in and said, “No one will talk to us, officially. But I know one of the officers. He’ll talk to Leo. HQ, Shemmy.”
“A cop in Leo’s pocket?” I asked as Shemmy slid the limo into gear.