Lightning struck down. The Gray Between opened around me. Time skidded, twisted, started, and stopped. In the nonmoments that took place, I caught a glimpse of the security system at my side. The lights, which should have been green or blinking green, all went red.
The lightning was shorting out the system. I turned in my chair and saw the snake box in Wrassler’s hand. It was shining red, a line of red light, rippling like lightning coming from the front doors, crackling, hitting the snake, and then shooting through the floor. And down.
Toward the Son of Darkness.
CHAPTER 13
Landing with a Thump on the Polar Bear Rug
I spun up and into a sprint. Almost reached the main elevator before I realized it would never open for me, not in no-time, even if the cops and crime scene techs hadn’t commandeered it. I whirled and raced for the stairs. Shoving the door open took effort and muscles strained to the limit. I dodged people on the stairs, more people than usual, thanks to the main elevator and half of HQ being off limits.
I took stairs, then hallways, then more stairs. It had taken weeks to map all the no-longer-secret passageways and stairways in the joint, and I was sure we had missed some. The architect had both a funny sense of humor and a good idea about hidey spots and ambush locations. I wound down and down. Past sub-four, where fanghead prisoners, like Adrianna, were kept, and into the lowest sub-basement, sub-five.
It was cold and dank and wet down here. The walls were spelled to keep out the water that would have otherwise dripped in and filled the place, thanks to the high water table in New Orleans. It was so wet right now that the whole place would be a swimming pool in minutes if the working failed. There was a faint hint of mold. A stronger tang of blood. And the reek of unwashed vamp. The Son of Darkness hung on the wall, still wearing the blood-and filth-encrusted clothing he’d worn when I had taken him down. The serial killer was still pulp and goo but was mostly human-shaped now, his long bones nearly back in place, his facial structure beginning to look normal. But his body was surrounded by a nimbus of red, a glow just like the one on the snake box. “Bingo,” I said.
Time spat and shook through me and returned to normal. I watched carefully and the magics vanished. If I hadn’t been using Beast-sight and my own skinwalker abilities, I’d never have seen it at all.
“Joses, son of Judas Iscariot,” I said, pronouncing it Yo-sace, son of Ioudas Issachar, as he had himself two thousand years ago, when he and his brother took the crosses of Golgotha and tried to bring their father, Judas, the betrayer, back to life. “Joseph Santana.”
He didn’t move. He didn’t breathe. His heart—not that he had one anymore, since I’d ripped it out of his chest—didn’t beat. I had no idea how he was healing except that his body might truly be immortal. Even without a heart, which I had given to the witches. I needed to call Jodi and see if the heart was still fresh and healthy. If the heart hadn’t begun decomp, that meant that I could take the SOD’s head and the pieces would still live. Which would be freaky.
I thought about the smell of the blood in the blood bottle. And the pink thread on the dog-fanged revenants. Someone had used immortal blood on the head and neck of the dead vamps when they were reassembled for funerals. And they healed. Sort of. Enough to come out of the graves when called. That was why so many were buried in human graveyards and not in the vamp cemetery on the far side of the Mississippi River with the other vamps.
If a sleeper agent had gotten some of that blood to the SOD at any point in the last months, that might be why the Son of Darkness was healing. Callan. Fernand. Amitee. Any of them might have gotten down here. I leaned and sniffed. Caught the stench of the mixed blood from the blood bottle. It still smelled fresh, which never happened with vamp blood until now. I traced the scent with my nose. It had been sprinkled all over the SOD.
This. This was why they had attacked HQ. To get down to sub-five and put blood on the heartless bag of bones.
I turned and walked back up the stairways and walkways and tunnels and passageways and back to the front entrance. Time flipped back and forth between stopped and normal as I walked through it all until I found Wrassler and Derek in conversation and told them what I had discovered. “Get a hose and wash him off,” I said. “It’s probably too late but it’s marginally better than nothing. And find and secure Callan and the Marchands. They’re in this up to their fangs.” When neither moved, I said, “Orders of the Enforcer,” which let them off the hook if there were negative repercussions from my decisions.
“I’ll hose off Joseph Santana,” Wrassler said, speaking of the Son of Darkness. “You handle the detainees.” Derek nodded and turned on a heel without speaking. Wrassler raised his eyebrows and looked at me. “Why does he hate you?”
I shrugged. “My winning personality?”
Wrassler moved off, chuckling and muttering, “Winning personality. Yeah. Sure.”
In the foyer, the cops were still questioning vamps, trying to get in the last interviews before dawn hit and the younger vamps became comatose and the older ones simply walked away. It would be hours before they talked to me, and I was done waiting. NOPD knew where I lived. They could come visit me there. I waved to Eli and walked out the front door.
There was a vamp central SUV parked in the big parking area with the key fob under the mat. I started the vehicle, flipped on the wipers, and drove home. I let my mind rove and wander as I drove, not trying to think anything in particular, not trying to make connections or deduce anything at all. Just letting myself meander internally. I had a bad feeling about a lot of things I had seen tonight and they seemed to lead nowhere. Which meant that they had to have a connection.
I pulled in an empty spot in front of the house and stopped. The lightning hit again, far off this time, and I saw the green sparking glow in my bedroom. The initial traces of understanding washed through me as all the little pieces began to line up for inspection.
The first time I had seen the magical thing called le breloque had been in a storm. A magical storm. A storm god, an Anzu, wanted it. There were magical detonators on normal bombs. Red magics on the snake and on the SOD. Mixed blood on the VIP—very important prisoner. All the Europeans knew we had him, and maybe they didn’t know he was heartless. Heartless. Funny me. Except it wasn’t amusing at all. After seeing revenants rise, I had to concede that the blood might heal the bag of bones. Maybe totally.