“So who planted them? Outside vamps or ones from inside? Never mind, I know the answer to that. Sleepers.” We had enemies here at HQ. Always had.
If I’d been human I would have missed the sound of a sword being drawn. I whirled. Pulled a weapon. Racked back the slide. Aimed at the head behind. Before I could fire, he was gone. Popped away. A breeze touched my cheek. Movement from above as he leaped over us. “Behind us,” I shouted to Eli. And fired at the second vamp.
Vamps are fast but not faster than a bullet. I nicked her in the rear as she popped away. Stupid. Humans were present. I put the gun away and drew a vamp-killer. More gunfire sounded. Kids and twenty-somethings poured in through the porte cochere entrance. And boiled in from the stairwell entrance. Part of the first wave had made it inside. Bruiser and Derek followed the group from the back. Gunfire sounded, echoing against my eardrums. There were too many combatants. More raced in from the passageway to the hidden gate entrance.
Outside, lightning crashed down. Hitting in the backyard of HQ. Into the small chef’s garden. The world went bright and brilliant and full of glare.
The Gray Between ripped out of me. The world slowed, hesitated, stopped. Standing outside of time, my hands grew pelt, claws, but I willed my knuckles to stay human sized. They ignored me. I could operate a gun if needed, but not well. My face ached. Fangs pushed through my gums and I tasted blood. It freaking hurt. My shoulders expanded, my waist shrank. But my feet were human in the boots. The transformation stopped there. I was still me-ish. But time was stopped.
Beside me Eli faced a vamp, one I didn’t know, redheaded, glowing pale skin, blue eyes. The one that had somersaulted over us and landed in front. Dang ninja vamp.
Eli was bleeding from a nick on the outside of his forearm. The vamp had a sword and it was descending on my partner, wicked sharp. Three rounds hung in the air between them. I calculated the speed of the bullets and the speed of the falling sword, one powered by a master vamp. The rounds would hit the vamp midface, but using my own blade, the sword would continue to fall, slicing though Eli’s arm. I pushed the sword about three inches outside its current arc. It resisted, the vamp’s muscles engaged, but I put my back into it and the sword moved.
As long as I didn’t touch their flesh, they stayed in their own time. Or that was the way it had worked in the past. Things seemed to change a lot with magic, even mine. And one thing I didn’t want was for the enemy to know everything I could do with time. So while it wasn’t a perfect solution, this worked.
Eli safe, I stepped into the ballroom. In the bright light of the lightning, I counted two unknown vamps and seven gangbangers. Weird. It had felt like more. Chasing the kids up from the stairway were Bruiser, Derek, and some of Derek’s security guys. Wrassler was firing down the stairs, his weapon aimed high. Cover fire. Derek and one of the new guys were firing at the gang kids, who were also shooting up the place.
I guessed that Gee and others were in Leo’s office protecting Leo, Katie, and Grégoire.
I had time to study the two unknown vamps, the redhead, and the one I had shot in the tush. They were skilled and old, far older than they looked on first glance. They were vamped out and had old, old, old eyes. Both vamps were using two long swords in the La Destreza style. From their body positions I’d guess they were masters at the fighting form.
The shot one was pale skinned, covered in ancient blue tattoos in spirals and circles and wavy lines. I had seen someone like her once and made a mental note to find Koun and chat him up. In the shadows of the lightning strike, I saw something unexpected. Two vamps I recognized. One was named Callan, the other Fernand Marchand. Both had been enemies to Leo and had reason to hate me.
Callan had been a vampire kept in a cage at Katie’s and I’d nicknamed him Corpse, verbally abusing him, allowing the vamps to torture him. Well, maybe torture was too strong a word, but they hadn’t been playing tiddlywinks with him. He had served a vamp named de Allyon but claimed it was only because his master kept him alive. He had boxer’s shoulders, the thighs of a cyclist, long, slender fingers, and an angel’s face, but he’d been turned for his looks, not his brains. Or so I’d thought. When De Allyon had been defeated, Callan had asked to join Leo’s power base and been welcomed in. He’d been healed by Sabina and fed by Christie, one of Katie’s working girls. Now it appeared that his loyalty was lacking. Part of the attack on Leo’s power base. And maybe the brainless part had been a ploy.
Fernand Marchand was a longtime troublemaker, had been a suspect in more than one security leak. Dark haired and jaded, he was the brother to Amitee Marchand . . .
My heart slowed and my fingers suddenly ached. The Marchands had come from France for Amitee to marry the vamp masquerading as Leo’s son Immanuel, the liver-eater I had killed when I first came to New Orleans. Everything, every freaking thing, went back to Immanuel.
Immanuel and his friends had wanted to kill Leo and take over the city. Immanuel, Amitee, and Fernand had been traitors. Yet Leo had kept the brother and sister around even after his heir was killed. Why? Was it part of the homily that said we should keep our enemies closer? Callan and Fernand were standing together, Fernand’s hand on Callan’s shoulder. It would have been all cozy, lovey-dovey if Callan hadn’t been pointing a gun right where I had been standing. I thought about hurting them both but put it off for now. There were other things I needed to see, and they might lead me to other enemies.
Too many enemies, too many plots. Only one thing was certain. This situation had nothing to do with the United States Navy or an attack on the military. That had been a feint or an unhappy accident. This was a direct hit on Leo and the fangheads on U.S. soil.
Spotting a kid in a red jacket and black pants dripping on the marble floor, I moved in. He was holding a nine-millimeter sideways in one hand. It was a street gang firing stance, one where aiming was more a general-direction thing, not target practice. I leaned in and sniffed, getting a good whiff of his weapon, his clothing, his armpits, and his breath. He was whacked out on drugs, cheap liquor, and vamp blood. I moved closer to him. Breathed in through my mouth, air moving over my tongue with a soft scree of sound. Vamp blood. And sex. A lot of both and recently. He’d been fed and rolled and seduced and sent on a quest. All by a vamp I didn’t recognize. The kid was maybe fourteen.
Kits . . . Beast hissed. Not sucklings. Not yearlings. But young. To be kept at mother cat’s side, taught to hunt. Taught to survive. Not ready to be mated.