Vamps. Praying. This was crazy. Except that their sire and master was injured, and his death would set into motion perilous changes. If Leo fell, with his city in chaos, and the EVs arrived, all of Leo’s people were in danger of a second and true-death. I secured my weapon and escaped to the elevator and down, to find another madhouse where the NOPD bomb squad was defusing and removing bombs in the ballroom. The cops escorted me back into the elevator and instructed me to go up a level and out the front door.
Unfortunately, a crime scene investigation was taking place there. Two dead and drained gang members—kids—lay on the floor and the security system just happened to have gone out during this battle, so there was no internal surveillance of the fight or the deaths. The cops seemed to find that suspiciously convenient and wanted to talk to everyone present. Including me. And while Eli, who was sitting in a folding chair in the security room, had proof of our whereabouts on his thumb drive, taken from Adrianna’s prison, he didn’t volunteer that just yet. He wanted to upload the video first before turning over the drive to the cops, so we were stuck. Sitting. Waiting.
Alex, who had followed everything on video, called and talked to his brother about the fights he was reviewing on the security feed. Skinwalker hearing allowed me to hear it all. Alex had video of the ballroom brawl, or most of it, and he had the battle in Leo’s office. “Le Batard and four other vamps came in through the secret side-gate entrance,” he said.
Dread swarmed through me like hornets. I hadn’t secured the gate after I entered. Nor had Eli. We had been keeping our exit open, but in hindsight that had been stupid. Very stupid.
“Grégoire fought, but Le Batard threw some kind of spell at him and Grégoire fell. That was when the sword-fighting vamps rushed Leo, five to one, and cut him to pieces. When Leo fell, they took Grégoire and retreated.”
“Ask him if he can follow their vehicle,” I said.
“Working on it now, Jane,” Alex said.
“Have I told you recently that you do a great job?” I asked the Kid.
“Words are nice, but I’d rather have a car.”
Eli snorted and ended the call.
We sat in the security office near the front door, unmoving, silent. I was thinking through the last hours, tying the events from now into events from months and months past. Tried to make sense of it all. Le Batard wanted Grégoire. Everything else was a feint? No, that left out the revenants and the ship at the dock and the invisible ship in the lake and the attempt to free Adrianna, and the bombs in the ballroom. Vamps never had just one goal for anything they did, thinking far ahead on the chessboards of their games. They always had multiple goals. Le Batard would take what he could from each attack. Yeah. That.
Dawn was approaching when a minor vamp walked up to me and handed me a box. It was plain, white, no tape, no bow, so it wasn’t a present. “From your primo, Edmund Hartley. With his compliments. He said to tell you that disturbing the priestesses was not necessary. His exact words were, ‘Brawn and bullets beat magic.’”
I let a corner of my mouth curl up, wondering if he had shot Adrianna to get the bracelet off her. Not asking, but still curious. I opened the box and inside was a gold snake, the one from Adriana’s arm. And she had put up a fight getting it removed, if the blood on it was an indication. I sniffed the blood. The crazy woman’s, all right. I rubbed my fingers over the gold, which was slick and shiny and slightly warm to the touch.
“Legs?”
I looked up. “Oh. Hey, Wrassler. ’Sup.”
“I’ve been standing here for a good thirty seconds, talking to you.”
Eli was watching me with narrowed eyes. Not concerned, exactly, but piercingly interested.
I raised the snake to Wrassler and asked, “Does this feel wrong to you?”
Wrassler was a seriously big man, like World Wrestling Entertainment big, and though he’d lost a leg and full use of one arm, he still fit the size ratio. Even more since he muscled up after the injury. He was big and bald and my friend. He took the snake and handed it back, fast. “It’s spelled. Something dark.”
I held the snake, drawing on Beast vision. Something dark, like a fog of moisture, wrapped around my fingers. I hadn’t noticed that about the bracelet until now. The dark shadow was in the shape of a snake. The snake in the center of all things was what skinwalkers used to shape-shift. What if it was magic that worked contrary to my own? What if someone had given it to Adrianna knowing that I’d take it? I was full of conspiracy theories lately, but vamps lived for that stuff. I had no desire for anything dark magic in my life. I frowned at the snake. “You got a big hammer?”
“There’s a maul in the tool shed out back. You want me to beat it out of shape, Enforcer?” He used the last word to remind me that because I was one of Leo’s Enforcers, what I wanted had significance and weight, but I had to formulate a request into a specific order.
“Yes. Beat it out of shape. Then take it somewhere and have it melted down. Then give it to the witch coven and have them Break it. Charge the spell-cost to Leo.” Break was a magical working to stop and destroy another magical working. I put the snake back in the box and instantly felt better. The box, though plain, was an anti-magic box. Cool. And yeah. The magic in the snake was of an attack variety, going after my own, maybe striking anyone’s magic. “Once it’s broken, bring it back to me.”
“For the Enforcer.” It sounded formulaic.
I figured that was agreement, and I gave him the box. “Thanks, Wrassler. How’s the dating life?”
The big guy took the chair beside me. It creaked under his weight. “I never thanked you for setting me up with Jodi.”
“I didn’t set you up.”
Wrassler scuffed a palm and sausagelike fingers over his bald pate. “Potayto, potahto. I’m crazy about that girl.”
“I’m glad.” And I was. Jodi was a cop, a successful woman in a man’s world, but she had been lonely. So had Wrassler. They had thrown mournful, meaningful, lovesick glances at each other for months. They were perfect together.
“I’m gonna propose.”
My happy romance-is-everything thought pattern crashed and burned. Jodi would have a conflict of interest if she married a blood-servant of the Master of the City. She would not be allowed to maintain her command of the woo-woo department of NOPD. She would be demoted, pushed aside until she was totally ostracized and powerless. And she would never leave the force. And Wrassler would never leave Leo. Jodi was totally human. Wrassler was a blood-servant and would live for a couple hundred years. This looked like a disaster waiting to happen. I hadn’t thought this through. “Uhhh.”
“I got the ring.” Wrassler was holding out a small, black velvet jewelry box. He opened it with a thumb. Inside was a yellow gold ring with three diamonds the size of pencil erasers. I knew next to nothing about diamonds, and even I knew they were flawless. Nothing else flashed like that. Wrassler stood, pocketing the velvet box. “Just so you know.” He walked away, the snake box in his other hand.